Reckless
by nine miles to go
Summary: Sequel to "Lying Heart." Gwen has spent the last two years of her life trying to move past Peter Parker, but it's hard to forget a boy who lives twenty feet down the hall. COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Spiderman or anything involving it blah blah etc.

**Reckless**

* * *

New York is a large city, and Empire State is a large university, but every so often—approximately once a week—the whole mass of it seems to shrink to the size of a thumbnail. Those are the moments Gwen runs into one slouchy, brooding Peter Parker.

The first time it happens is two days into their orientation week. Despite the fact that they are neighbors, literally living in the same hallway, she hasn't seen him all summer and she is momentarily struck dumb at the sight of him. At once she is both determined to ignore him and determined to one-up anything he says with a remark that is more clever and more nonchalant than his. She struggles for words, struggles for air and common sense and all of the things that only just started coming naturally again after all these months without him, but it turns out it doesn't matter, because Peter doesn't even see her in the crowd with his head ducked down and his headphones in his ears.

All the subsequent times Gwen runs into him hardly matter, either. He is usually either skateboarding or running. She doesn't keep in touch with him these days but she gets the impression that he is perpetually late for class, late for work, late for god knows what else he spends his time doing. She never sees him coming back to his apartment or leaving it. She suspects that he doesn't often use his door.

Two years pass.

It's upsetting, the way that they pass without seeming to pass at all. After graduation Gwen imagined that over time she would eventually stop thinking about Peter, stop checking headlines out of the corner of her eye and gluing her eyes to every news program, stop feeling like he is sucking all the air out of the city every time he walked past. But now, as they start their junior year, two years grown and two years apart, it sometimes feels like she perpetually lives her life in the moment he slid out of her window for the very last time, that cold January night so long ago.

The rest of her life hasn't stalled—in fact, everything else seems to be rushing at her with such an intense speed that sometimes it's almost a comfort, being stuck on something as frivolous seeming as a boy. Her internship at OsCorp has become a demanding part-time, paid position in a research lab, where she and a select team of people are testing new methods of cloning. She still tutors on a regular basis, primarily in math and science. Her brothers are growing up with alarming speed and her mother seems to need more help wrangling them with each day that passes. Between the chaos of school, work, and her frequent visits home, Gwen rarely has trouble falling asleep at night.

Rarely. There are nights when she isn't tired enough, or when her thoughts are pestering her, darting so irritatingly that she can almost imagine the synapses in her brain firing on overload, that she can't sleep. She usually spends them thinking of Peter.

One night, in first month of their freshman year, she almost works up the nerve to knock on his door. On the television that is absurdly expensive and well-maintained in comparison to her dingy apartment, she has been intensely watching news coverage of Spiderman's latest misadventures, which this particular time involve attempts at disabling bombs that have enough power to blow an entire city block. It ends with a contained explosion in a bank and no sign of Spiderman.

There is a rational explanation. The NYPD are waiting outside of the building in another attempt to apprehend the masked vigilante. It would only make sense for Peter to slide out unseen.

But that doesn't stop the beat of her heart abusing her ribcage, pumping the words _what if, what if, what if_.

She doesn't knock on his door, doesn't even leave her apartment. A few uneasy days later she sees him at an intersection on campus shoving a bagel into his mouth and feels an almost violent irritation at ever worrying about him in the first place. He's fine. He's eating a bagel and not thinking about her and _fine_.

* * *

Gwen has one friend.

Well, that's an exaggeration. Gwen has plenty of friends, but Mary Jane is the one she ends up seeing the most. It isn't even that she and MJ are particularly well-suited to each other, and Gwen doubts that if they hadn't gone to high school together that they would even bother spending so much time together in college, but their schedules are both fairly hectic and it's nice to have the kind of friend she can casually meet fifteen minutes for coffee and not feel bad about being short on time to really connect.

Mary Jane is different from Gwen, in more than a few ways. She pouts a lot. She giggles a lot. She is very theatrical and loud, the kind of girl who can wear short-cropped t-shirts that expose her midriff without ever being labeled as a slut. They're a good match for each other, Gwen thinks, because she sometimes needs a little bit of crazy in her life and Mary Jane is someone who is in perpetual need of an audience, which Gwen is all too happy to provide.

On the first week of their junior year at Empire State they're spending the afternoon in Mary Jane's dorm—Mary Jane is loudly memorizing a monologue while Gwen attempts to finish some paperwork from her position at OsCorp.

Mary Jane flits over to Gwen, who doesn't look up for a moment, trying to finish a precariously worded sentence.

"We went to high school with Peter Parker, right?"

Gwen's head snaps up from the paper so fast that Mary Jane flinches in surprise.

"Yeah," says Gwen.

Mary Jane looks pensive for a moment, nods, and shoves the marked up monologue page in Gwen's face and says, "Do you think this is a good monologue to use for a _Hamlet_ audition?"

Gwen hasn't read _Hamlet_ in six years, and couldn't care any less about the play right now if she tried. She bites her tongue. She will not ask. She will not, she will not, she will _not—_

"Did you run into Peter somewhere?" The words burst traitorously from her before she can even think of a more casual way to ask.

"Huh? Oh, yeah," says Mary Jane. She pokes at the monologue again, beckoning Gwen to read it.

"Like, in a class, or—or what?"

Mary Jane sets the monologue down in Gwen's lap. "A class," she says. "Some British lit class, one of the required cluster classes." She regards Gwen curiously for a moment. The problem with having a theater major for a friend is that not only is she nosy, but sometimes obnoxiously perceptive. "Why, do you know him well or something?" she asks. As her eyes narrow Gwen can already predict the type of questions that will follow.

"We all went to high school together," Gwen says noncommittally.

"Ohhhh," says Mary Jane. "You liked him, didn't you?"

Gwen rolls her eyes, tries to stay casual. "That's always your first thought with a boy, isn't it?"

"Well, I guess he is kind of cute. In that sulky hipster way."

"Whatever," says Gwen, highlighting something that doesn't need highlighting.

"Gwen Stacy," says MJ, a grin curling on her face. "You're _blushing_."

"I'm not," Gwen snaps, setting her papers down with enough force to knock MJ's monologue aside and send the other girl reeling back in surprise. Gwen takes a breath and collects herself. Mary Jane is staring at her, her face a mixture of hurt and concerned.

"I'm just—I'm really busy right now," says Gwen lamely.

Mary Jane nods, her eyes trailing the floor. Gwen knows from experience that she will take this personally and sulk for a little while, but Gwen also knows from experience that she'll be over it sometime in the next few hours, at which point she'll resume texting Gwen about more audition crises or how fat she is after eating one of those giant cupcakes in the Village.

Gwen leaves MJ's dorm, into what she prays is some of the last of this brutal summer heat. It isn't a long walk to her apartment from here, but she doesn't want to go back there just now, back to a place where Peter Parker may or may not be breathing, eating, sleeping, just twenty feet away.

She wanders around for a while, finds a few yards of grass that someone has decided to call a park and sits in it, letting the heat soak into her skin until she feels sticky and raw and gross. It's probably the first time all summer she has had anything resembling free time, and here she is spending it melting like a popsicle on the sidewalk. She sits there for an hour, sits until she runs out of thoughts to think and the sun finally starts to sink in the sky.

Gwen isn't stupid enough to stay out late in New York by herself, and even if her safety weren't an issue, she doesn't want to run the slight but very real risk of running into Spiderman on these streets. She heads back to her apartment, set on the idea of a cold shower and a few chapters of some silly detective novel her brother wants her to read.

She isn't looking up when she bursts through the door that leads to the hallway of her floor, so she doesn't see Peter's aunt, just hears a happy voice call, "Gwen!"

Gwen's head jerks up. "Oh," she says, and her hands fly up, either to make some gesture of hello or to gage whether or not Mrs. Parker is going to try and hug her, but the other woman crosses the space between them and envelops her easily before Gwen spends any more time struggling.

The hug is easy, natural, and undemanding. It has been a long time since Gwen has even seen Peter's aunt, and she can probably count on one hand the number of times she has spoken to the woman in person, but Mrs. Parker hugs her as if she has known her and loved her for years. Gwen can't help but ease the tension in her shoulders, the tight muscles of her face. She remembers a time when her mother used to hug her like this. She hasn't thought to miss it until now.

Mrs. Parker pulls away, holding Gwen at arm's length and peering at her.

"You look so grown up," she says affectionately. "How have you been?"

"Good," says Gwen, because that's what she always says to adults. "And you?"

Mrs. Parker smiles and says, "I've been just fine. I was in the city so I tried to drop by and visit Peter, but you know him. He's a hard fellow to catch."

"Yeah," says Gwen uncomfortably, wondering exactly how much Mrs. Parker knows about their strained, nonexistent relationship over the past few years.

"I feel better, knowing that he has a friend so close by," says Mrs. Parker, unwittingly answering her question.

Gwen feels an inexplicably guilty twist in her stomach. If it's anybody's fault that they don't speak to each other, it's Peter's—but she does feel somewhat indebted to Peter's aunt, if not for always trying to keep her in the loop, then for moments like this, when she treats Gwen with the kind of parental love that Gwen has done nothing to deserve. Gwen bites her lip, trying to decide the honest but appropriate way to answer, but what comes out instead is, "Yeah, it's nice, being neighbors."

It isn't. Gwen doesn't know why she even keeps this apartment. In all honesty she had no idea Peter was going to be living here when she signed the initial year-long lease, that summer after graduation. She could and still can afford much better, but at the time the apartment was just veiled attempt at pretending she was moving out—even then, Gwen knew she would be spending most of her days back at home with her mom and her brothers. She picked this place because it was cheap and close to campus, not because she intended to spend any real time here.

It doesn't explain why she renewed her lease last year, though, or why she renewed it a second time last month. She tells herself it's because the place is rent-controlled, but what does rent control matter when she has enough money to live in the ritziest single dorm Empire State has to offer and then some?

Mrs. Parker is looking at Gwen uneasily. Gwen thinks that maybe she didn't lie well enough to satisfy her.

"You should come over next Sunday for dinner," says Mrs. Parker sincerely.

"Oh—well, maybe," says Gwen, trying not to wince.

"Six o'clock?"

Gwen smiles, her face aching with the effort. Let Peter find some excuse to get her out of it; apparently he has no problem lying to his aunt about still being friends with her, so he should have no problem lying to stop this dinner from happening, either.

"Sounds great."

* * *

Okay, okay. This is happening.

Things that are relevant for knowing: Unfortunately, I can't update this every day. School is starting in a few days and it will be full of extensive reading and learning of things. I'm shooting for maybe a few updates per week. It will be completed at some point, that much I can promise.

Also can we talk about how Andrew Garfield got a speeding ticket, and that if I had been his girlfriend sitting in the front seat next to him I would have loved him enough to tell him to slow down before THAT embarrassing debacle. But let's be real, he wouldn't have even been driving, because if it were me with him we'd have pulled over to make out pretty much before he released the emergency brake.

You will all be proud to know that I have not bought a SINGLE PAIR of Gwen Stacy boots in the time I've been away from story updating. Somebody please praise me for my otherworldly self-control in managing this feat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Reckless**

* * *

On Fridays Gwen heads out to OsCorp early, around seven in the morning. She doesn't have class until noon and she figures she'd rather get her work done earlier in the day than spend the rest of her Friday afternoon in a lab. At the very least having her Friday free gives Gwen some illusion of being a normal college student, even if she knows she is probably just going to go back home and help her mother with dinner.

Gwen hits the sidewalk outside their apartment to the sound of beeping and grinding and the whirr of construction vehicles that she has all but phased out of her consciousness, growing up in New York. She looks to her left and sees that the tiny alleyway by their apartment is now home to several machines and a dozen grumpy looking construction workers. In the summer, particularly, this city seems to have no regard for its residents' sleeping habits, because workers are scrambling to get everything done in the hours between when the sun comes up and when it starts frying the pavement, somewhere between six thirty and ten.

She wonders how Peter will sneak in through the alley with all that equipment, but she's sure he'll find a way. It seems like he always does.

"You're here early."

Gwen looks up and sees her coworker, another intern-turned-part-timer, Owen. He is perched at a chair, his body craned awkwardly over a microscope he must have been peering into. She looks around to see if anyone else has arrived, but it seems to be just the two of them. Gwen smiles politely and chooses a seat a few chairs away from his to set down her bag and get herself collected.

"Yeah," she says. Ordinarily she would say something friendly, something along the lines of "look who's talking," but Gwen is cautious around Owen—not because she thinks of Owen as a threat in any way, but because it is glaringly obvious that he has had a crush on her since they first started here a few years ago and she doesn't want to say or do anything that might give him some false hope. She's been on the receiving end of that stick for enough years and she wouldn't wish it on anyone.

They sit in silence for a moment as Gwen retrieves her papers from her bag. She feels him watching her and shifts her face away, feeling some gnawing guilt about the situation. She considers Owen for a moment—he's attractive looking enough, he's polite and ridiculously intelligent. He has that sort of oafish charm that boys with big shoulders have. She thinks she should like him, that most girls in her position would, but Gwen seems to have a type. A type that decidedly and unfortunately looks, walks, and talks like Peter Parker.

"Got any plans this weekend?" asks Owen after a few minutes of working in silence.

"Um," says Gwen, trying to organize her thoughts. She will probably go home. She will probably follow Mary Jane to some party to make sure she gets home alright. She will undoubtedly visit her father's grave the same way she does every Sunday morning.

"I might have dinner with an old friend," she says.

He smiles. "That's always nice."

"Yeah," she agrees, ducking her head back into her work. She can sense him waiting for her to talk again, to ask him what he's doing this weekend, but she doesn't. She doesn't mean to be rude, but she is afraid the question would be an invitation for him to try and ask her to do something, and she isn't in the mood to let him down.

"Hey, listen," he says.

"Hm?"

"How about we get coffee sometime next week?"

"Coffee?" Gwen bites the eraser of her pencil. She hates coffee. It isn't something she'd bother to tell him, though, because she isn't going to go.

"You know, if we ever catch a quick break in here," he says, and it pains Gwen how anxious he looks, waiting for her to answer.

She isn't a monster. "Maybe," she says noncommittally, praying that he'll understand that she doesn't want him to bring it up again.

The way his face perks up indicates that she has had no such luck. "Tuesday?"

"I don't know what my schedule looks like yet. Start of the semester and all." She glances at her watch. It's nine o'clock, way too early for her to have to be in class, but nobody else has arrived and she doesn't want to be sitting in here with him alone any longer. It makes her feel kind of rotten, as if her mere presence is sending him the wrong message.

She finishes packing up her stuff. "I'll see you around."

* * *

Gwen meets MJ for a quick brunch before class when MJ looks at her buzzing phone, smiles apologetically, and gets out of her seat.

The only times MJ doesn't loudly advertise her phone conversations in front of Gwen are when she is talking to Richard, her long-distance boyfriend. MJ always ducks out of the room or keeps her voice down low, still a little bit embarrassed about dating him after all this time, because he had briefly dated Gwen in high school. MJ said once that she doesn't want to make Gwen feel uncomfortable with all their carrying on. Gwen told her she didn't care, because it was the honest truth and still is—in fact, it alleviated some of the awkwardness of the way she broke up with him, that he glommed onto MJ so soon.

That aside, it was almost three years ago, so Gwen doesn't understand why MJ has to make a big production out of keeping that part of her life so separate from Gwen. Gwen suspects that a part of her is uneasy that Richard liked Gwen first; rarely has MJ ever been the second choice to Gwen. Boys tend to flock to MJ like moths to a lamp. It's the kind of thing that doesn't bother Gwen, who doesn't have the time for or any interest in boys at the present, which is most likely why she remains MJ's one and only girl friend.

MJ whispers something into the phone and heads back over to Gwen, who is picking at the last of her scrambled eggs.

"There's a broadcast on the TV in the front," MJ reports, pointing a few feet away. "Spiderman might have drowned."

Gwen's teeth dig into each other, her jaw already starting to ache with her effort not to react. This seems to happen at least once a week. Something happens to Spiderman, and Gwen gets all worked up, wondering if and when she'll see Peter again and confirm that he's okay. It's almost absurd, to be so worried about him. Almost nothing about her life would change if he died tomorrow, because they both live their lives as if the other doesn't exist.

Except for those brief but telling moments she sees him every now and then and her heart leaps into her throat and her palms sweat and the portion of her brain devoted to any form of common sense seems to turn into mush. Sometimes she is afraid she lives for them.

"What happened?" Gwen asks.

"Some truck's brakes failed or something and flipped off the bridge, a bunch of other cars almost toppled in, too. Scary."

"What—what was he doing in the water? How did he fall in?"

MJ shrugs on their way out of the café, holding open the door for Gwen to walk out. "The reporters only just made it on the scene, looks like they don't know much."

Gwen's eyes are riveted on the screen, which is showing a view from the bridge, where the railings are twisted and mangled and there seems to be no sign of Spiderman.

"You coming?"

Gwen doesn't answer. Peter grew up in Queens—she can't imagine he's the best swimmer, but wouldn't his abilities be more than enough to compensate for that? What could have possibly happened for him to fall in and not resurface? Why couldn't he react fast enough to sling a web and keep himself above water?

The only thing that made sense was that he must have lost consciousness before he plummeted.

"Gwen? Gwen."

Mary Jane walks directly in front of the screen, blocking Gwen's view, and only then does Gwen realize that she has a hand to her mouth and that her face has unconsciously twisted with dread.

"We're going to be late to class," says Mary Jane, following Gwen's gaze to the screen. She regards it for a moment. Still no Spiderman. "C'mon. I'm sure Spidey'll be fine, but I'm going to get locked out of Acting Lab if we don't get a move on, like, five minutes ago."

"You go on," says Gwen. "I—I forgot something at my place."

"Shoot," says MJ. "Well—my place later?"

Gwen nods vaguely as MJ departs, then stands there in the café and watches the coverage for another hour. In that time they manage to clear the wreckage on the bridge, evacuate all of the crash victims, and redirect all of the traffic. At some point they stop pointing the camera toward the water, which is maddeningly flat and still and ominous, and start interviewing people on the bridge.

Spiderman doesn't resurface. Gwen misses her class and can't even remember which class or where it was. She palms her cell phone in her hand. Does he even have the same number? It occurs to her that she deleted his contact information years ago, but as soon as she holds the phone up her thumbs instantly remember the familiar pattern, tracing over the keys as if she has dialed it a thousand times since then.

She won't call him. What if he picks up? Or worse, what if he doesn't?

She finds herself at Washington Square Park and sits down at the fountain, listlessly refreshing the news page on her cell phone and watching people idly sink in the last few rays of the summer. There are couples sitting and leaning into each other all over the park. Normally she doesn't begrudge them their happiness because normally she's too busy to even pay them any attention, but right now she hates them. Hates them for their slow-beating hearts and their lazy smiles and bare feet. The more she stares at them the more irrationally her hatred of them grows, until she shoves her cell phone in her pocket, flies back to her feet and stalks out of the park.

Sometime around three o'clock in the afternoon she forbids herself from worrying any longer. She turns her phone off and walks to a street vendor to buy a hot dog. She takes a bite and resists the urge to spit it out—it's offensive tasting, she can't eat anything with her nerves worked up like this. She does a lap around the campus, harboring some false hope that maybe she'll run into him, or even MJ, or anyone she knows who can distract her, but she has no such luck.

Her mother calls. Gwen doesn't pick up. Later she listens to her mother's voicemail, asking her if she can pick up some milk before she heads over for dinner tonight—Gwen completely forgot she agreed to come home for dinner at all. She looks down and considers herself. Her shirt is sticking to her, her feet are grimy in her sandals, and she can feel her bangs matted to her forehead. She decides to stop at her apartment and take a quick shower before she heads out.

It isn't the first time she has run into a member of the Parker family in her hallway this week, but seeing Peter catches Gwen so off guard that she audibly gasps. He is fumbling to put his key in the lock and he looks back up at the noise, sees Gwen, and immediately looks down—but not before she sees the thick stream of blood running down his forehead to his chin.

At first she isn't sure what to do. Should she say something? Should she try to help him? He seems to be doing just fine standing on his own, and she doesn't want to offer her help unnecessarily, not if it means an hour of painful silence interrupted by even more painful attempts at small talk.

"I—I can't open it," says Peter, holding up the keys, keeping his head down. He seems embarrassed. "I think the lock is stuck."

The only reason she knows it's her he is addressing is because they are the only two people in the hallway. He doesn't look at her or give any other form of acknowledgement.

Gwen takes a few steps forward. She isn't sure if he's asking for help or not. "Um," she says, "you kind of have to—well, jerk the lock upwards a little bit, like—well, here," she says, taking the keys from Peter. She feels his stare on her hands, on her forearms, on the back of her neck as she twists the key into the lock, jerks it upward instinctively, and pries Peter's door open.

He laughs lowly. "Thanks," he says.

She wonders why he needs help getting into his apartment, if he's even worse off than he looks, but it occurs to her that he hardly ever has to use the lock since he's always coming in through the window—and now that the construction is blocking his path he has to come through the hallway like the rest of the mere mortals living in this building.

"They're tricky," she says, ducking out of his way so he can get inside.

They're both turning away, but in the process it almost seems like their eyes get stuck on each other and they can't look away. He is bloodied and bruised, but once she gets past the initial shock of his gashes, she feels an alarmingly familiar tug in her gut and an almost irresistible urge to reach out and touch him—his shoulder, or his cheek, the way she used to do in those brief few days they were happy together, those brief few days she has immortalized and maybe exaggerated in her mind.

"How have you—how have you been?" asks Peter.

They both cringe a little at the awkwardness of it.

"Good," says Gwen.

"Good, that's—I'm glad."

He's taller seeming that she remembers, standing so close to him now. There are a lot of things she is remembering now that she would rather not. The way his nostrils flare just the slightest bit when he laughs, the way he smells like whatever off-brand shampoo he uses, the way his voice sort of tapers off uncertainly at the end of his sentences.

She takes a step back from him. "You know I'm coming to dinner Sunday, right?"

The smile on his face is crooked, disbelieving. "Huh?"

"Your aunt invited me."

Peter looks like he might choke. "That's—oh. She didn't tell me."

It's unexpected, how two years of bitterness and anger seems to dissipate in just a few words. Gwen wants to _want _to be furious with him, to yell at him, to grab him by his skinny shoulders and shake him, but instead she finds herself starting to smile like she's still some lovesick senior in high school.

"Yeah. I'll see you Sunday, then," says Gwen.

Peter looks a little stricken, but not unhappy. He tries to walk into his apartment and staggers just a bit. Gwen grabs his arm to steady him.

"Are you going to be alright?"

He blinks at her, surprised that she has asked. She finds herself wondering if he has any friends here; she finds herself wondering if anybody bothers to ask him that at all these days.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he says. He offers her a little salute from the side of his face that isn't oozing blood. "Sunday, then."

The door shuts behind him and Gwen stands there in the hallway for a moment, wondering if she just hallucinated the entire encounter. Her heart is so inexplicably swollen that she thinks it might burst. It seems like this is the most monumental thing that has happened to her in two years, just talking to some boy outside his apartment, but it's Peter, and it's almost _normal_, and she just feels this irrational need to call someone and tell them about it, to make sure it was real.

She sticks her phone in her pocket and takes a breath. She recognizes this euphoria all too well, recognizes her stupidity in her rush to embrace it—it has only led to heartache, but right now Gwen is beyond caring. She hasn't felt anything in such a long time. Even heartache is better than nothing at all.

* * *

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT TO ALL ANDREW FANGIRLS: if you have access to Netflix, his naked body is now STREAMING ONLINE. I don't know when it got on "instant play" but the first part of the Red Riding trilogy is up ... and so is Andrew's butt. Also he speaks British the whole time!

Err, for the kiddies out there, it's maybe not so appropriate, though. Save Andrew's butt for your seventeenth birthdays, maybe (I believe it's rated R?).

WISH ME LUCK, I HAVE TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL TOMORROW, and this place is just chalk full of baby freshmen ... who think I am one of them. Curse my round face and vertically challenged body. It's actually my last semester, I should be all sentimental but I'm like, guys, get out of my way, I don't want to be here LET'S GET A MOVE ON, etc.

I mean ... college! Go do that, kids! For learning. And reasons. Whoopee.


	3. Chapter 3

**Reckless**

* * *

There is no news of Spiderman that night. Gwen is relieved that she ran into Peter in the hallway earlier, or she would no doubt have been wondering the whole evening, sitting at the dinner table and nodding and tapping her foot and trying not to check her phone every five seconds while her mother asked everyone in a diplomatic matter how their weeks went.

"How's the semester going?" her mother asks as Gwen helps her collect the dishes.

Gwen sucks a preparatory breath through her teeth. "Good," she says evenly, because she knows where this conversation is headed.

"Meet any new friends?"

Gwen scrubs at a particularly stubborn piece of melted cheese on one of her brother's plates. "Sure. New classes and all. Still hanging out with MJ."

This isn't the answer her mother was searching for, which usually ushers in the second phase of this all too predictable conversation that happens nearly every time a new semester starts: "Any _boy_ friends?"

Gwen rolls her eyes in response, earning a sigh from her mother.

"I just don't understand, Gwendolyn. You're pretty, you're smart, you're in these biology and chemistry classes with all these handsome, eligible young men—what's the problem?"

The cheese finally comes unglued from the plate and slides down into the sink, but Gwen keeps scrubbing at it as if it's still there. She takes a breath. She won't make the same mistake of overreacting to these questions like she has in the past. She tries to see it from her mother's perspective, her mother who grew up in an upper middle class family of seven sisters whose ultimate goals were to find husbands to support and protect them.

Gwen thinks it's a stupid notion. Her mother is certainly tough on her own, something that Gwen knew long before her father died and left her to raise four children alone. But Gwen sees that her mother wants that same stability for Gwen, wants a secure, happy future like the one that got taken from her too soon.

More pressing, though, is her mother's nagging implication that there is something wrong with her—why else wouldn't she be interested in boys? More than once she has expressed concern that Gwen hasn't brought anybody home since "that Parker boy"; what she tries hard not to say is that Gwen hasn't brought anybody home since her father died.

Gwen looks up at her mother, trying to hide her exasperation, but this time something in her mother's face seems different. Pinched, and hopeful. Gwen remembers, not for the first time, that she is her mother's only daughter.

"I'm—I'm going to get coffee with someone next week."

Her mother's face lights up like a beacon. "Coffee?" she asks, setting her eyes back on the dishes, trying too hard to sound casual.

"Yeah." Gwen's lips feel a little bit thick from the lie. "His name's Owen."

"Owen what?"

"Uh," says Gwen. "I'm—I'm not sure." She wracks her brain but she honestly can't remember, which only makes her feel another twinge of guilt toward him. Not only does she have no interest in him, but here she is using him behind his back, and not even effectively enough to remember the most basic of information about him. She never intends to actually go on this coffee date but it seems wrong anyway.

"Where did you meet him?"

"OsCorp," says Gwen, feeling more uncomfortable as the conversation progresses.

Her mother smiles a little at this. "And he's _age appropriate_, right?"

Gwen never quite knows what her mother means by "age appropriate," as she seems to preach to Gwen about the merits of dating older men as often as she warns against them, so Gwen just says, "He's a year older than I am."

The discussion ends as soon as her youngest brother races in with some issue about something that didn't tape on the TiVo, and Gwen is all too happy to duck out of the kitchen and go watch TV with her brothers to avoid any further interrogation. Her mother joins them sometime later, looking chipper. When the theme song to one of the younger boys' favorite shows come on, she even hums a little.

It should make Gwen feel better for the lie, but somehow she only feels worse.

* * *

MJ knocks on Gwen's door around ten o'clock on Saturday and says without much ceremony, "I didn't get the part. We're going out tonight, let's go."

Gwen knows better than to question her friend when she gets this determined and melodramatic, so she dutifully pulls her hair out of its ponytail, splashes the visible moisturizer off of her face, and swaps her sweatpants for a leather miniskirt.

"Did you get a part at all?" she asks, shoving on a high heel.

MJ shakes her head, jittering at the door, looking impatient to leave. "There's this bar, like, five blocks from here—I know a guy who will let us in."

When doesn't MJ know a guy, Gwen wonders. "Lead the way," says Gwen.

On the way there, Gwen already knows exactly how the evening will transpire, the same way it does every time MJ gets in one of her moods. MJ will arrive at the bar all giggly and showy, letting all the college co-eds admire her so she has some sense of validation after getting rejected. She will be coy, she will counter everyone's remarks wittily, and she might go as far as to rub one of the boys' shoulders, but inevitably she will remember that she isn't as bold as she thinks and come cowering back to Gwen and telling her she wants to go home.

Gwen will sit in the corner, nursing a beer, looking as unwelcoming and unavailable as she possibly can.

What's funny is that MJ likes to sneak into these bars, likes to make grand proclamations about getting drunk, but Gwen has never seen MJ with a drink in her hand. Gwen suspects that despite all the bravado she hasn't ever gone very far romantically, either. But that's part of being dragged along on the Mary Jane Show. What you see is rarely what you get.

On the way home MJ at least seems a lot happier than she was when she arrived at Gwen's door. For all her theatrics, Gwen at least appreciates that MJ has never been much of a crier or one to feel sorry for herself, one of the few things the girls have in common.

She grabs Gwen's hand, pointing at a convenience store near Gwen's apartment. "Let's get some ice cream," she suggests.

The idea isn't appealing at first, but MJ's excitement about it is infectious. "Why not?" says Gwen.

Approximately three minutes later, when they obliviously walk right into a convenience store hold-up, Gwen finds a reason why not.

"Don't move," says the man, waving the gun in Gwen and Mary Jane's direction.

Gwen freezes because she knows she is supposed to. She is afraid—she can feel the rapid pulse of her heart in her chest, the tremor of her hands, the bulging disbelief of her eyes. But she feels somehow disconnected, watching this man point a gun at her, as if she is watching it happen to somebody else.

Beside her MJ is similarly rigid. She can her the other girl breathing, sucking in air as if her throat has constricted. She drops Gwen's hand.

"I said _don't move!_"

He swings the gun even closer to them—MJ squeaks and Gwen flinches, but other than that they obey. Gwen watches as he points the gun back to the pimply, twenty-something guy working the cash register and orders him to empty it.

She should be more frightened than this, she knows. She can see terrified tears starting to roll down MJ's cheeks and wonders why she isn't reacting like a normal person would. But Gwen has faced worse than this. Gwen has felt the breath of an enormous ten foot tall lizard on her face, Gwen has had lasers from the deadliest robot in the world pointed at her from a tied up chair. Gwen has had plenty of moments to fear for her life, and even though there is a gun in the man's hands, she is reasonably certain that the chances of them being murdered here are very slim. The man is desperate and clearly wants to get the cash and get out, and Gwen is smart enough not to stand in his way.

"Faster," the man orders the guy working the cash register. Gwen isn't really even paying attention, almost feeling impatient for the man to hurry up with his money and leave, but the gunshot knocks her back to her senses.

Both she and MJ scream as the guy crumples to the floor, holding his wounded side. Gwen was wrong, disastrously wrong about the whole situation, and only then does she feel the real fear creeping up like bile in the back of her throat.

MJ looks like her knees might buckle. Gwen closes her eyes and thinks of Peter. She wonders where he is right now. She wonders if she can will him here, if she tries hard enough. Would somebody have even called the police about this? Would Peter be in his apartment right now and get that bizarre, hair-raising sense he described to her once, and come running to their aid?

She hates herself for thinking it, but standing here with her eyes shut in the middle of a hold-up, all Gwen wishes for is a boy in a spandex suit with a God complex to come bursting through the doors to save them.

She hears the sirens approaching and her heart lurches in her chest as the man looks up, panicked. She doesn't want him to hear the sirens, doesn't want the police to interfere. This guy looks crazy, like he isn't afraid to hurt anybody and he will do it fast, before the police can even get into the store.

When the door flies open Gwen braces herself for a commotion, but all she hears is the whirr of a biocable releasing and the sound of the man's gun crashing out of his hands. Gwen releases a breath that she doesn't know she was holding, muttering the words, "Thank god."

Within seconds Spiderman has slung enough webs to trap gunman to the wall. He turns to Gwen and for a second he thinks he might actually _talk_ to her, but that's absurd, he wouldn't dare.

"The police are here."

Oh, Jesus. He _is_ talking to her. Her whole face starts to burn.

"I have to go, but there are ambulances outside—can you get him some help?" he says, motioning to the groaning man on the floor by the cash register.

Gwen nods wordlessly. Peter's gaze lingers on her for a moment through the mask, and then he tears off into the street. She hears a few shots go off from the police, prays that they missed him, and then hears nothing more.

"Oh my _god_," Mary Jane splutters. "Spiderman—just _saved_ us, and then he—he _talked_ to you."

Gwen ignores her, exiting the store to flag down anyone who can help the guy who was shot. She finds the appropriate emergency personnel, makes sure the guy is going to be taken care of, then stares off into the direction of her apartment complex, where she hopes Peter is now.

Mary Jane walks over to her in a daze, staring up at the sky. "I think I'm in love," she says dreamily.

Gwen snorts.

"What?" asks Mary Jane. "You don't have a monopoly on Spiderman crushes."

Gwen scowls. "What are you talking about? I don't—I don't like Spiderman."

"Oh, please," says Mary Jane affectionately, "you're obsessed with him."

Gwen opens her mouth to protest, but then MJ swipes at some of the tears from just a few seconds before, drying her cheek with the sleeve of her sweater. She looks up at Gwen and laughs nervously. "Anyway. That was really freaky."

"Yeah," Gwen agrees, but her mind is already some place else, already at Peter's door and knocking to make sure he's alright.

MJ grabs Gwen's arm. "I just—do you mind if I stay at your place tonight?"

Gwen stiffens.

"I guess I could go home—"

"No, of course," says Gwen. "Don't be silly."

It means she can't talk to Peter tonight, but she can't begrudge Mary Jane this. All traces of her normal dramatics are gone. She is genuinely shaken—she hasn't endured anything like this before, so Gwen reminds herself to show some compassion.

They walk back to Gwen's apartment, where Gwen walks past Peter's door and tries very hard not to stare for any sign of him. She blows up an air mattress for MJ, finds some clean sheets to put on it, and turns out the light surprisingly little talk of the incident. MJ falls asleep almost immediately. Gwen listens as her friend's breathing evens out, as she starts to snore. She closes her own eyes, tries to think of long strings of equations or the periodic table or any of the number of things that usually can put her right to sleep, but nothing works.

It's scary, how fast she can revert to a high school version of herself. She hasn't worried like this about Peter in years, or at the very least, she has been able to shove her worry aside and live her life. It feels like she is trying to reclaim something that once belonged to her, taking on the burden of this worry she has so long ignored, letting herself feel this way about a boy she thought she had permanently cast from her mind.

She stays awake for a long time. She tries a lot of things, from the silly equations to trying to plan out her schedule to counting sheep, but eventually it's the thought of him tapping on her window with that goofy, carefree grin all those years ago that finally lulls her to sleep.

* * *

Thanks so much for the reviews, guys. I was kind of wary about doing this from Gwen's perspective and I'm glad it seems to be going over well. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know! It's weird, but it seemed a lot easier to write from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy than it is from a 20-year-old girl, which is basically what I am. It shouldn't be so much of a struggle. Cue my identity crisis.


	4. Chapter 4

**Reckless**

* * *

As soon as MJ leaves on Sunday morning, Gwen knocks on Peter's door, but nobody answers. She tentatively touches a hand to the knob and twists, but it's locked. She can't decide whether or not she should be relieved by this.

She thumbs her phone again and considers calling him, but today is Sunday. It feels somehow irreverent to call Peter Parker on a morning that she ritually spends visiting her father's grave. So she shoves her phone into her purse, zips it shut, and flags down a taxi.

The drive takes twenty minutes. Gwen has her own car, parked in the lot under her family's apartment, but she doesn't take it. The rest of her family members don't know that she makes this trip every Sunday and she doesn't want them to figure it out when they see her car missing from the lot. It's not that Gwen feels that the brief moments she spends there are especially private moments that she doesn't want to share, but she doesn't want her mother worrying that Gwen is hung up on his death, doesn't want her brothers to make an example of her and start doing it too.

The truth is, Gwen will never recover from it. The idea of recovering from it is unrealistic and unhelpful. After her father's murder the rest of her family went through therapy, but Gwen politely declined, knowing that the end result would always be the same: she would never accept it, she would never lose the anger and confusion and shock that have rolled like a unpredictable tide ever since her night he died. She would only find ways to make it easier to live with, and she can do that on her own.

It's the walk into the graveyard that Gwen usually wakes up on these mornings. The faces here have become more familiar than the faces in her classes. She never speaks to the other people visiting graves—the old woman in her pearls, or the somber man who sits by the tree with a hat covering his eyes, or any of the strange cast of mourners she has accidentally joined over the years. But she feels like she knows them. She invents their losses and feels their pain without knowing what it's for, because at the end of the day her grief is raw and writhing and, she suspects, just the same as everyone else's.

There is a red rose on her father's grave. There usually is, when she gets here. Today it looks withered—it rained last night, so it's hard for Gwen to try and figure out how long it has been here, but usually they're fairly fresh. Gwen's mother has never said a word about it, and Gwen wonders how she gets down here so often to replace it, but she has never asked.

Between the drive and the walk it takes almost an hour round trip, but Gwen never stays very long. Her father wouldn't want her sitting here at his grave and feeling sorry for herself. She kneels down, nodding slightly at the headstone, imagining that she is saying hello. She sometimes feels as if she talks to her father all week long, as if she directs her thoughts at him purposefully enough that he can hear them, and even though she isn't naïve enough to believe there's any real benefit in being close to his grave when she does this, she imagines that he hears her better here.

The taxi driver is still waiting for her when leaves through the gates. She notices that taxi drivers rarely talk her ear off whenever she's coming back and forth from a graveyard. They drive back into the bustle of the city in silence as the rest of the world wakes up and the stifling summer heat starts to hiss off the sidewalks.

She asks him to drop her off at her family's apartment. She'll walk in, pretend she is dressed like this for church, and help her mother make breakfast, and just like always, neither of them will say a word about the place they both have been.

* * *

It doesn't usually take Gwen so long to choose an outfit. She is a girl who puts considerable care into her appearance, but she usually does this with ease, selecting items from her closet, admiring their cohesiveness in the mirror, and heading out the door.

Today nothing seems to fit right.

She's going to Queens, so she doesn't want to be too flashy. She wants to impress Peter's aunt by looking sophisticated, but she doesn't want to remind her of the very large difference in their financial situations. And—well, there's Peter to consider, and even if Gwen is pretending that she isn't considering him, she is.

She considers him in the floppiness of her shirt, in the slight wrinkle of her skirt, in the scuff on her sandals. She considers him in the mascara she shouldn't be so carefully applying and the headband she shouldn't be fretting with three times before letting it alone. She considers him in every item of clothing hanging in her closet and every beauty product in her tiny, stale-looking bathroom. If she wears this dress will he remember that she wore it to school that day she borrowed his pencil? If she sprays on perfume will he even notice anything about her has changed?

Eventually she overthinks it—scrubs all the make up off and opts for clothes that have absolutely no connection to Peter or high school or anything that can give her an excuse to continue her fit of indecision. She looks at her reflection, trying not to scrutinize herself too much. She shouldn't care. She won't care. She _doesn't_.

She swings past her place to get her car. She doesn't know how late dinner will go, but she doesn't feel like taking the subway back into Manhattan, not after last night's debacle.

She finds a place to park, walks up to Peter's door and feels temporarily paralyzed. She can't remember the last time she saw this house, or the last time she was even in Queens. Everything about the area seems so inextricably tied to him, and spending the last two years trying to purge him out of her thoughts has made her either unconsciously or all too consciously avoid everything related to him.

Eventually she summons the nerve to walk up the steps to his house. The door is flying open before she even finishes walking up—Peter is in the doorframe, and she is so stunned that she freezes, her mouth wide open.

"Are you—" They both start at the same, awkwardly cutting each other off.

"Are you okay?" Peter finishes.

Gwen nods. "And you're—"

"Yeah, yeah, fine," he says, looking relieved, opening the door a little further.

"Last night—" Gwen starts, but then they both hear a happy trill from the kitchen, Mrs. Parker asking if it's Gwen at the door.

Peter turns around. "Yeah, she's here," he says, sounding surprisingly okay with the situation. Gwen has wondered all week if he would behave weirdly around her, if he would be as stiff and uncomfortable as he has seemed to be every other time they barely interact, but if anything he looks a lot more collected than Gwen is herself.

Dinner runs smoothly, with Mrs. Parker acting as the cruise director of their conversation ship. Throughout bites of mashed potatoes and some form of beef Gwen doesn't ask too many questions about, Mrs. Parker determinedly fuels the dialogue along, excavating the last few years of Gwen's life. She prompts Gwen to talk about her classes, her various club activities, her tutoring, her brothers, her position at OsCorp. Their project at OsCorp strikes a particular interest.

"Cloning?" says Mrs. Parker, sounding impressed. "Are you working with actual subjects?"

Gwen shakes her head. "A lot of it is theoretical now."

"But … they've cloned plenty of things before," says Mrs. Parker. She looks to Peter for confirmation. "Haven't they?"

Peter smiles good-naturedly and nods. "But not very successfully," says Peter, "so I assume that OsCorp is trying to improve the process."

Gwen finishes chewing a bite of her mystery meat. "The process of stripping a nucleus from an egg cell and replacing it with a donor is tricky business. A lot of species have never been successfully cloned." Gwen looks down at her meal and tries not to wonder exactly what it was they would be cloning when their meal was alive. She swallows another bites and continues, "But OsCorp is trying to develop a way to streamline the process so it isn't so traumatic for the subject—a lot of animals who have been cloned in the past have suffered defects that hopefully we can correct."

"So when do you start actually testing it out?" asks Mrs. Parker, intrigued.

Gwen can sense Peter smiling at his aunt's curiosity from across the table and it's hard to keep herself from smiling, too. "That's the advantage of working at OsCorp—we don't have to test it out on real subjects initially, we have the technology to run theoretical trials and once we find a method that works, we can test it with almost guaranteed success."

She looks up and sees that Peter's smile has twitched. OsCorp's ability to run theoretical trials must be all too fresh in his mind, even after all this time.

"How impressive. Your mother must be proud," says Mrs. Parker, earning the slightest eye roll from Peter.

Gwen laughs. "Well, it's no freelance job at the _Daily Bugle_," she says, and the instant she teases him she feels her face heat up—is that okay? Do they do that anymore? But his eye roll has become exaggerated with pretend irritation, so she lets herself relax, forking in another bite of the mashed potatoes.

By the time Gwen leaves that night, she has lost three rounds of Scrabble, been forbidden from calling Peter's aunt "Mrs. Parker", and has been invited, without Peter's consultation, to every Sunday dinner his aunt ever makes. As she heads to the door it occurs to her that her cheeks actually ache from smiling, that her chest almost tickles from laughing. She leaves reluctantly, she leaves as if she is leaving her own home, or at least she imagines how she should feel when she leaves her own home—these days it seems like she can't leave her own family fast enough.

Peter walks her back out to her car. It's past ten now. She wonders how the past five hours snuck away on her.

As soon as they hit the street Peter seems to flounder for the first time the entire evening. "I'm so sorry—I couldn't stick around last night," he says, the light of the streetlamp reflecting the guilt in his eyes. "I wanted to make sure you were alright, but with all those police out there, they've been so determined lately—"

"Peter, you don't have to worry—you stopped the guy before he could do anything to us, and besides, we were fine," says Gwen.

"We?" asks Peter, looking confused.

"My friend," says Gwen, "she was standing right next to me."

Peter looks sheepish. Gwen doesn't know why she feels somewhat gratified knowing that Peter didn't notice her loudly attractive friend, but she smiles a little bit. He seems to interpret this as forgiveness for his slight.

The walk to Gwen's car is a short one. Gwen almost wishes she had parked farther away.

"I was worried about you, you know," she admits.

It takes Peter a second to figure out what she's referring to. "Because of the police?" he asks. He shakes his head and says somewhat bitterly, "I've gotten really good at dodging them. I mean, it sucks, but they hardly ever get me."

Gwen bites the inside of her cheek and tries not to look at the bare skin on his forearms and his neck and his calves, looking for parts of him that might have changed, that might have been scarred and altered forever in the time since she looked at him last. She doesn't want to think about everything that has happened in her absence, but she is also dying to know everything, dying to ask him about every little detail and struggle and thought he has ever had.

She doesn't want this two-minute walk to her car. She wants the hours, the days, the years she has wasted. It seemed so impossible back then, but here they are, with this same undeniable, electric feeling she seems to feel all the way to the tips of her fingers just by standing near him.

What happened to them? At what point did they decide to give up on everything?

She can't even think of a fixed moment in time. Even after that last kiss, when Peter crawled out of her window and she knew they could never be together, they were civil to each other. They spoke to each other in class. He let her know he was alive by texting her every now and then.

Maybe it was after high school graduation. They didn't speak that whole summer, and then when school started back up it was easy to be strangers, even when they lived mere feet from each other. Still, Gwen can't remember how, or why, or exactly when they became like this—broken, disjointed, out of touch.

She thinks irrational things, things she hasn't let herself think since she was still a teenager. That maybe if she had tried harder, maybe if she had never let him alone, he would have given up on the promise, on his attempt to keep her out of his life. She could have knocked on his door and let herself in. She could have hung out in the buildings where she knew he had class. She could have called when she heard reports about Spiderman's less successful ventures, or on his birthday, or over any number of things.

She could have—but he could have, too, and he didn't. She looks up at him now and wonders if he is thinking the same way she is, if he has any regrets, or if she is only reminding him of a possibility that he long since laid to rest.

"You're different," she says to Peter, feeling a little silly as soon as she says it.

He considers this. "In a bad way?"

What she means is that he seems older, somehow. Not necessarily confident, but comfortable. He seems at ease with her, not jumpy the way he used to be, as if he was afraid at any moment one of them would lose control and say or do something stupid.

"No," she finally says. "It's … not in a bad way."

Peter smiles self-consciously. "I don't think you've changed much at all," he says, and she wants to ask him what he means by that, but he's really close to her and she can't quite find the air.

"In a bad way?" she asks with a lilt in her tone. She's trying to make fun of him but it comes out a little too quiet, a little too sincere. She can see the blacks of his eyes—when did he get so close?

"Not at all," he says.

She can practically feel his breath on her face. She doesn't want to leave here, doesn't want to leave this moment behind. The heat of the summer has been relieved by a gentle breeze, and he's standing here so warm and familiar, like an anchor tethered to a time long ago, a time she was capable of being happy.

"I've got to … It's my turn to do the dishes," Peter finally says, interrupting the weighted silence.

Gwen nods, vigorously and awkwardly. "Yeah, yeah, you'd better get inside."

"It was good seeing you," he says, half of his body already turned away.

"Yeah—yeah, I had a great time."

He pauses for a moment, then leans in for a hug. It's awkward, it's brief, but it makes Gwen's heart leap right into her throat. It happens so fast that she doesn't have enough time to recover by the time he has pulled away.

"Good night," he says, waving, already three feet away from her.

She clears her throat, leaning against her car, and barely manages to croak a good night back. She watches until he starts walking up the front porch, and it occurs to her that he might turn around to see if she is in her car yet, so she scrambles to open the door and start the engine. The drive back to Manhattan is a short one, or at least it seems shorter than usual. She only realizes after she parks the car and heads up to her family's apartment that she hasn't stopped smiling the whole way home.

* * *

Well, I've just been informed that I'm "ineligible" for the class I've been enrolled in for two damn weeks and I might not be able to graduate this December because any class I could take instead to get those three credits is now full. So now not only is there a hundred fifty bucks of non-returnable textbook down the tube, also THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS of a semester's tuition I spent three and a half years kicking my own ass to try and avoid! The only appropriate revenge I can think of is giving all the people in charge names of random characters in this fanfiction and then sending them off to immediate, perilous, preferably embarrassing deaths. I'M OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS.


	5. Chapter 5

**Reckless**

* * *

At OsCorp the next day Julie, a woman in her early forties and one of Gwen's immediate supervisors, ushers her in excitedly.

"We're close," she says to Gwen, unraveling several large strips of paper full of scribble it will take Gwen most of the afternoon to decipher. Julie points emphatically at a particularly small set of scribbles, which Gwen makes a mental note to remember later when she will inevitably be pouring over it.

"Close to … ?" says Gwen, prompting Julie to continue.

"Look!"

Gwen is trying, for the life of her, but she can't figure out what any of it means. "Julie, what—"

"A preventative measure—look. _Look_. To make the enucleated egg and the transfer nucleus more compatible—"

"I can't read it," says Gwen honestly, but she can tell by the tremor in Julie's voice that whatever this is, it's huge. She can't help but get caught up in the excitement of it herself, and she suddenly needs to know what's going on, needs to know faster than it's going to take for her to pick through Julie's illegible handwriting. "I can't _read_ it—"

"Here," says Julie, grabbing Gwen's arm and unceremoniously dragging her over to one of the larger mainframes in the lab, where Gwen sees an enormous and much more organized display flashing at them. It takes Gwen almost a minute to even start to make sense of it, but once she does she can't help the grin that splits across her face.

"Oh my god," she says, and Julie almost hops with impatience and excitement. Gwen stares at it in awe. "This—could change everything."

"I was working really late in the lab last night," says Julie, "with Owen, actually, and I just had this idea, and it probably only took an hour or two, but it's working. All of the theoretical trials have succeeded in every species, even _humans_—"

"Two hours?" asks Gwen in complete and total disbelief. She is floored. She still isn't sure if she understands all of this. "You did this in two _hours_."

Julie's eyes are so wide they look like they will pop out of her skull. "I don't think we're going to get permission to run any real trials for at least a month," she says, as if she is trying to manage Gwen's excitement when clearly she is trying to contain her own.

Gwen nods appreciatively, still scouring through the plans. She can't blame OsCorp for being especially cautious these days—they endured a lot of public scrutiny after Dr. Connors's transformation, not just for their development of an extremely dangerous bioagent but for the thoughtlessness of sticking something as perilous as the Ganali device on top of the roof of a building in the most densely-packed city on the continent. It took almost a year of damage control before they could pick up their abandoned projects, let alone begin new ones. Gwen was lucky to have been assigned to this department, because at least the restrictions weren't as brutal since everything could be tested with computer programs.

At least, it could until now.

Gwen knows that the success of this project will invite a lot of controversy. While OsCorp was upfront about jumpstarting it, Gwen doubts that anyone was counting on them succeeding this soon. Even Gwen can't help her shock. With this kind of technology they could clone virtually any species. They could clone humans. They could likely even grow organs without human hosts.

They could save millions of lives—this is the beginning of something that will change the face of modern medicine, of the lifespan of the average human all over the world. And Gwen is lucky enough to be one of the first witnesses to it.

"Congratulations," says Gwen, turning to Julie, who probably hasn't slept all night but looks as if she could run up a mountain.

"Thanks," says Julie, beaming, "but I couldn't have figured it out without all the research you and Owen have been scouring through—"

"Yeah, yeah," says Gwen cheekily, "I'm sure we were a real help."

It should probably bother her that Owen was there all night to be a part of this when she wasn't, but Gwen certainly will never spend the night in OsCorp, especially if she would be running the risk of being in there alone with Owen again. She feels badly to be relieved that he probably won't be in today, seeing as he stayed up all night, but it's nice to think she'll be able to get some work done without him awkwardly staring at her from across the room.

She sits down and grabs her notebook to start taking notes, barely coming up for air for the next three hours. It's brilliant, it's overwhelming, how everything is changing—the project, _Peter_, her very outlook on life—it almost scares her, she thinks maybe she has been asleep all this time, because she finally feels like she's waking up.

* * *

The next day Gwen meets Mary Jane for a quick breakfast at one of the coffee places near campus. MJ sits and politely listens to Gwen ramble on about the project at OsCorp even though it is glaringly apparent that she has no idea what Gwen is talking about, but Gwen can't stop herself from spilling over the brim with excitement, and almost twenty minutes pass before she even comes up for air.

Mary Jane's eyes are wide. "So this … is kind of a big deal," she says at the end of Gwen's impassioned ramblings.

Gwen beats a hand against the table animatedly. "This _is_ a big deal, an enormous one," says Gwen. "I bet there will be world-renowned scientists visiting our department, I bet the media coverage on this will be international, not to mention all the _insane_ things this research could lead to—"

"Gwen!"

The sound of Owen's voice makes her stomach twist before she even recognizes that it's him. She stops mid-sentence but doesn't turn around, even though it's absurd to pretend that she hasn't heard him.

"Gwen—hey, Gwen."

Gwen sighs.

MJ points a little less-than-subtly behind her. "Uh, that guy's trying to—"

"I know," says Gwen lowly. She forces her expression to stay pleasant, then turns around and says, "Hey, Owen."

Owen's hands are practically shaking. Gwen wonders if he has even slept since he and Julie spent that night at OsCorp. "Did you hear about the project? Oh, of course you did, but isn't it _awesome?_"

"Yeah," says Gwen, less than enthusiastically. She can sense MJ staring at her from across the table, perturbed by her sudden change of heart. She pointedly doesn't look over at her friend.

"Hi, I'm Mary Jane," says MJ, loudly, extending her hand to shake Owen's.

Owen looks up, with that same bewildered, mouth-wide-open expression that men usually have the first time they meet her effusive friend.

"I'm—I'm Owen."

Gwen cringes. It's not that she minds that MJ is drawing the attention away from her—in fact, she would much rather have Owen pining after MJ and all of her red-headed, navel-exposed glory than pining after her while she's trying to get work done—but now that MJ has put on her friendly A-game face, the odds of Owen leaving any time soon are zilch.

MJ beams at him. "Nice to meet you, Owen. So you work with Gwen?"

"Yeah," he says, his face getting kind of blotchy and red.

"Gwen was just telling me all about your project—why don't you pull up a chair? I'd love to hear more about it."

Gwen tries to suppress a groan, watching her friend go into action. As far as she knows MJ has never cheated on Richard, but that certainly doesn't stop the girl from noticing a prospect when she sees one. She checks the time on her cell phone, wondering how long she has to endure this to seem polite, or if she should just extricate herself now with a flimsy excuse.

She looks up at the television screen, hoping to distract herself. She reads the running script under the reporter, only half paying attention until she sees the word _SPIDERMAN _in big letters. She squints at the television, wondering what he's gotten himself into now—it isn't even ten o'clock in the morning.

"Earth to Gwen."

Gwen dismisses her friend with a wave, staring at the screen. "I can't hear it," she says.

"What's going on?" asks Owen, following Gwen's fixed gaze to the television.

"It's Spiderman," says MJ, and Gwen doesn't have to look to know that her friend is rolling her eyes. "Gwen is totally _obsessed_ with him."

Gwen doesn't even have the heart to deny it. "It's the middle of the day," she says, mostly to herself.

"You like Spiderman?" says Owen, sounding almost defensive.

Gwen shushes him. She still can't hear anything over the din of people gabbing over their breakfasts. On the television there seems to be a badly-filmed reel of Spiderman chasing after someone, but the person is all in black, incredibly agile, and indistinguishable. Just when it looks as though Spiderman is close to apprehending the man, he turns around, stopping just for a beat, and throws something that emits a thick, fast-growing smog and the image becomes impossible to see.

The video was taken not too far from here, about halfway between campus and OsCorp. Gwen is on her feet before she even realizes she intends to run.

"Hey," says MJ, grabbing her arm. "What are you—"

"The police—they're going to get him," Gwen stammers, "someone has to _do_ something."

Even Owen is looking at her as if she has lost her mind. "Gwen, even if the police do get to him, what are you going to be able to do about it?"

_My dad_, she almost says, because even after all this time her first impulse is to rely on the one person she knows will always be on her side. She bites back her frustration and embarrassment for reacting like this, for not being able to do anything. She looks up. Spiderman hasn't emerged from the smoke, but there are police cars everywhere, she can see their lights reflecting in the smoke on the screen.

Gwen pulls her arm out of MJ's grasp. "Somebody has to stand up for him," says Gwen. Suddenly she hates this city, this city full of people who don't deserve Peter, full of people who sleep soundly at night under his protection but will only idly stand by and watch as the police try and shoot him down every chance they get.

MJ has always been one to get swept up in the moment. "I'll come with you," she exclaims, already bustling toward the door.

"Uh—"

Gwen can hear Owen behind them, his feet shuffling hesitantly. She doesn't look back to see if he's following them. She tears off into the street. Usually she would assume she and MJ were an even match for each other athletically, and she is the one in flip-flops while MJ is in sneakers, but Gwen immediately leaves MJ in the dust.

"Hey, wait up," MJ calls behind her.

Gwen hears her, but she also hears something louder, something more demanding: the rush of adrenaline that seems to be screaming in her ears, the slap of her sandals on the pavement, the sound of Peter's voice all those years ago, croaking the words, _I can't lose you._

He's in trouble now. She feels like she can sense it, the same way Peter claims to be able to sense danger from a mile away.

She hears someone panting next to her. "Where to?" Owen asks.

Gwen stares at him incredulously for a moment, but he's serious. His posture is set and his face looks as determined as if it was all his idea to go crime-chasing in the first place. For once Gwen is grateful for his odd, unwarranted devotion to her. She gasps out the street names and he nods, then takes off with an agility and speed she will never be capable of no matter the circumstances.

She keeps running, darting between pedestrians, cutting corners and darting past cars. She can hear people gasping or yelling at her after she passes but she doesn't care. She never bothers to look back and see if MJ is still following.

It probably takes her less than ten minutes to run to the scene, but it feels like an hour. She knows she's getting close long before she arrives because the smog has dissipated over the entire street. There are huge crowds of people waiting to see what has happened, and a police barricade that they are paying very little attention to. It isn't difficult for Gwen to shove her way forward. She is crazier and far more determined than any of these rubberneckers.

She coughs. The smog is filling her lungs. She pushes forward, jumps the barrier. Immediately she feels someone's arms around her. She turns around, sees an officer that she actually recognizes as one of her father's friends and says, "Let _go_ of me, _right now!_"

He is too astonished to hold her and she tears forward. She sees two figures in the smoke—one of them is unmistakably Peter, she can tell just by the curve of his spine, by the familiar way he hangs his head. He is staggering. He is hurt. Gwen rushes toward him, hearing the heavy thumps of footsteps behind her, and opens her mouth to scream "don't shoot," but someone beats her to it.

She looks up, her lungs still tearing in their effort to gather clean air, and that's when she finally can see the two of them: Owen is propping up Spiderman with one shoulder and holding up his other arm with a commanding hand in the air.

"Don't shoot!" he yells again.

His eyes flit over to Gwen's and Gwen can't help the horror that seems to wrench all the muscles in her stomach. She can't believe she has done something so stupid, letting this boy get involved in something that is way over his head. He is standing in front of thirty armed men for her. He is literally putting himself in the line of fire on her word alone.

It occurs to her that maybe this is the kind of guilt Peter has had to live with since the day her father died.

"Hold your fire," someone yells.

A shot goes off and Gwen shrieks, whirling around at the noise. It's all happening so fast and by the time she turns around, both of the boys are down on the ground. Gwen can't reach them fast enough, it feels like living in a dream, the kind of dream where she commands her legs to move her but they are suddenly detached and out of her control—it feels like slow motion, it feels like agony, and she can't help but think that no matter which one of them has been shot, it is all her fault.


	6. Chapter 6

**Reckless**

* * *

It's Peter. Even before she reaches them she can tell, because Owen is trying to grab him by the shoulders and hoist him up. Gwen gets on the other side of him, the word _Peter_ dangerously close to slipping off of her tongue, but she catches herself in time.

"Where did it hit you?" she asks immediately. There is enough commotion that nobody can hear the three of them, she is sure.

"My—my side," says Peter through clenched teeth. "What is—what are you _doing_—"

"Can you get out of here?" asks Gwen.

Peter takes a little too long to answer. "Yeah," he says, his voice strained.

"What's the plan, then?" asks Owen, and Gwen looks up with a start, embarrassed that she almost completely forgot he was there.

"I just—can you—?"

Peter holds out his wrists and Gwen sees that both of his biocable devices are crushed. She doesn't even see where he produces a fresh one from, but she wastes no time in securing it to him. It's been years since she has handled one of them but she feels like she is on autopilot, like she is capable of anything even with the dozens of weapons aimed in their direction—it is the kind of calm she can only assume comes with being the daughter of a police captain, or the ex-girlfriend of New York's most wanted superhero.

She leans in, her hand lingering on his wrist, speaking low enough that Owen won't be able to hear. "Go _home_."

Peter doesn't nod, but there is no doubt that he heard her. Owen stares at Gwen, baffled and clearly bursting with a thousand questions she doesn't have the time to deal with.

"Do you two … do you _know _each other?" asks Owen.

"No," they both say at the same time, loudly.

Peter clears his throat, and before an awkward silence can further give them away, he turns to Owen. "Thank you," he says. He seems to realize after a beat that he should acknowledge Gwen in a similarly unfamiliar way if they really want to seem like strangers, so he adds, "Both of you."

Only after he slings away does the smog clear up enough for Gwen to notice the alarmingly large puddle of blood on the concrete.

* * *

Almost instantaneously after Peter's disappearance the police rush forward, and Gwen is handcuffed and being ushered toward a police car. She doesn't protest. She holds no clout here, now that her father is dead, and she doesn't want to simper and moan and remind everybody who she is to get out of this.

Owen is cuffed beside her, still looking a little bit as though he's seen a ghost. Gwen looks out at the crowd still pressing forward to see what the commotion is about and even from this distance can see a head of red hair bobbing toward them—MJ has missed everything, and will no doubt be upset to realize it. Gwen turns her attention to the police car, anticipating someone's hand on her head to bully her into the backseat, but just then the man that Gwen recognizes as the new police captain steps forward and regards the pair of them.

"Gwendolyn," he says, nodding his head.

Gwen looks down at her mucked up flip-flops. "Captain Johnson," she mumbles.

"May I ask what on earth you thought you were doing just now?" asks Captain Johnson, his teeth grit. Gwen has known this man since she was in kindergarten and in some ways it feels like being scolded by an uncle.

"Spiderman hasn't done anything wrong," says Gwen quietly, trying not to draw too much attention to herself.

Captain Johnson's expression is incredulous. "Spiderman killed your _father_."

"What?" says Gwen, feeling the blood drain out of her cheeks. The notion is so absurd, so untrue, that she can't believe anybody would think it, but she stares at him and sees that he wholeheartedly believes. "No," she stammers, "Spiderman didn't kill my father, Connors did, you don't know what you're talking about—"

"Uncuff her," says Captain Johnson, looking away from her curtly.

Gwen scowls at him, at his condescension and his presumptions. "Owen, too," she says, jerking her hands away so she can't be released without him.

He turns back to her, his eyes steely with disappointment. If he thinks this will faze her than he has no idea what she has been through in the last few years. After a moment he shakes his head and says, "The boy, too."

She hears the click-clack of the cuffs releasing and lets her hands fall to her sides without acknowledging whoever let her go. Captain Johnson is already walking away from her.

"He didn't kill my father," Gwen calls after him. She can't explain the almost jelly-like feeling in her limbs, the rushing of the blood in her veins. She is somewhere trapped between disbelief and fury, coming to the sickening realization that her father is probably the reason Peter has been hunted all this time. "He _didn't kill him_, he was trying to _help_—"

Owen puts a hand around Gwen's arm, gentle but firm. "Let's go," he says.

She swivels around, about to scream at him, too, but the rage dissipates halfway up her throat. She still hesitates, not quite letting him lead her away.

"Right now is not the time," Owen reminds her, and only then does she become really, _truly_ aware of half of Manhattan ogling at them—aware that she has, yet again, dangerously connected herself to the one boy she is supposed to avoid at all costs.

She ducks her head down and follows him. The crowd doesn't part for them in their parade of humiliation, but instead only seems to make it more difficult for them to pass through, trying to catch a glimpse and making comments that Gwen doesn't even process as they go by. She sees the flash of a camera out of the corner of her eye and wonders just how far the damage is going to extend on this poorly planned stunt.

There are a lot of reasons she should be upset—that she put Owen in danger, that she might have just put her family in danger, that whoever it was Peter was chasing is dangerous and on the loose, but all she can focus on is the bleak irony of her actions. She has only just managed to earn back a sliver of Peter's attention, and here she is, reminding him in the loudest, most public way possible why the two of them can never be together.

"Hey!" MJ catches up to them, grabs Gwen by the arms and practically rattles her. "Are you okay?"

Gwen blinks at her friend. "Yeah," she says.

"I heard a _gun_ go off—"

"They hit Spiderman," says Owen grimly.

"Jesus." Mary Jane looks at Gwen again, her eyes swimming with tears, her cheeks as red as her hair. "I thought—well, I'm glad you're alright," she says, pulling Gwen in for a hug. "You stupid _idiot_."

Gwen hugs her friend back—she appreciates the gesture, appreciates MJ's concern, but it's the last thing in the world she wants right now. Her skin is crawling. She doesn't want to be touched. She wants to take off running down the street she knows will take her back to their apartment complex in the next five minutes and bang on Peter's door until she sees him in the doorframe, alive and mostly whole and waiting for her.

She looks at Owen. "You shouldn't have—" she starts, but that's not what she means. "You didn't have to … "

Owen just shrugs.

"Thanks," she finally says, because nothing else seems to suffice.

* * *

It takes almost ten minutes to shake them off. Gwen stands as patiently as she can, listening to Owen as he tries to digest everything that has just happened, to MJ as she demands a play-by-play of the whole scene, but the entire time it feels like she is stifling a scream. She taps her foot, crosses her arms, looks around the city block, but she stands there, for the life of her, stands there and listens to them and answers questions even though she feels as if the front of her skull might implode.

She needs to get to Peter. It feels like something is literally tugging her chest forward, drawing her back to the apartment building; she can only compare the feeling to the tug of the biocable on her chest that time Peter threw her out the school window.

Once she finally reaches their hallway she wastes no time with formalities, breathlessly knocking on his door at a volume that will surely alarm the entire hall.

She waits five seconds. Ten seconds.

"Peter?" she calls, banging on the door again.

No answer. She doesn't wait for any seconds this time, she can't even remember how to count—she jiggles the doorknob, but it is unyielding.

"Peter," she says again, kicking the door with her foot in frustration.

She can't help the noise of frustration that escapes her, growling from her throat. She has the absurd idea of breaking down the door, because she thinks after the past hour there is just enough adrenaline coursing through her veins that she could just _do_ it, but she forces herself to take a breath and take stock of the situation.

Her phone. Yes. She'll call him.

She deftly dials his number. She waits for three rings. He wouldn't do this to her—he wouldn't be away from his phone, he wouldn't be ignoring her, not after what just happened. Peter is a lot of things—stupid, bullheaded, impulsive, but not _thoughtless_, not when he knows she is worrying about him, not after leaving her to stare at a puddle of his blood on the sidewalk.

She hangs up before it goes to voicemail, and pounds on the door a third time. "I swear to God, Peter," she says under her breath. Again, no answer, but she is expecting it this time. She smacks the wood in frustration and sits there for a moment, breathing in, breathing out, feeling like a crazy person.

He could be unconscious somewhere on the streets. Bleeding out in an alley. In the clutches of whatever he was chasing. He could be _anywhere_ in this godforsaken city full of people who will not raise a hand to help him. She wouldn't even know where to start looking for him, she wouldn't even know who to turn to for help.

Or he could be in his apartment. It is the thing she both prays for and dreads—he may be safe from the rest of the world in there, but if he isn't answering, he is badly off.

Then, of course, there is always the possibility that he ignored her altogether, that he's still out prowling the streets as Spiderman, but she can't imagine he would do that to her. She doesn't want to imagine that he could.

It's her faith in him in the end that helps her make the decision—to stalk into her apartment, to grab the only pair of boots she has left in there over the summer, shove them on her feet and head back to his apartment door.

She has seen this done a thousand times. Not just on television, but from her own father. She was only eight years old the first time he taught her how to break down a door. It was only a joke then; she was so little, and so impressed by the idea of it when she saw it in some action sequence on television that he had methodically gone through all the motions of it with her, and even then Gwen had been rapt with attention, soaking in every word. The memory of it makes her chest ache, but she barrels past it, letting her father's ancient words settle her heart.

_Aim for the area just below the doorknob_.

Gwen steels herself, staring at it. The door is flimsy, the wood is hollow. It shouldn't be so hard.

_Swing with the momentum from your dominant leg_.

She twitches her right leg experimentally, then backs up a few feet. She takes a deep breath.

_Don't hesitate. Come at it with everything you've got_.

She shuts her eyes—she probably shouldn't, it occurs to her, but it's too late—and pushes herself forward, throwing her entire mass into her splayed right leg, colliding with the door with a thud. It swings open so unexpectedly and unceremoniously that Gwen stumbles through it, barely able to keep her balance—it kicks back from the wall with a clatter and she catches it as it swings back at her, minimally damaged, but open, thank god.

"Peter?" she says, quieter this time, feeling kind of embarrassed. She swings the door behind her, jamming it upward to get it to close. She finally turns around and gets a full glimpse of the apartment.

"_Peter._"

He is breathing. That is the first thing she notices, because she can see the exposed wound on his side rising and falling unevenly. His entire body sags into the bed and his sheets are already soaked in blood. There is red everywhere, more of it than she has ever seen, and her first thought is to call her parents (no, her mother), and her second one is to call an ambulance, but she remembers with a grim, horrified sort of acceptance that there is nobody they can rely on, that she is the only person who can help him now.

She walks over him, lifting her hands uselessly, hovering over him but afraid to touch him. He is too pale. The bruises seem to leap off of his skin in comparison, dark and offensive and already starting to color sickeningly at the edges. One of his eyes is rimmed with purple from a blow, and the entire left side of his face is one large, grotesque looking scrape.

His wrists are mottled where his biocables were crushed. She touches one of them gingerly and he flinches, but doesn't open his eyes.

It's the bullet wound she's the most concerned with. It seems to have grazed him, but badly. It is the kind of wound that would put an ordinary person in the hospital for days, and although it looks particularly gruesome and painful, it has, at the very least, stopped bleeding.

"Hey," she breathes, knowing she can't hear him. _I'm gonna have to take off your suit_, she almost says, but it feels silly to say it to an empty room, feels wrong to vocalize something this oddly intimate when he can't hear her.

She touches the tips of her fingers to the edge of the spandex, near the base of his neck. It's strange, how easily it comes to mind, the last time she had to do this for him. She almost shudders, remembering the smell of burning spandex and flesh, the sound of the city whirring past and Peter's father yelling at her from the driver's seat.

It peels off easily this time, though. She can't help but stare—the skin of his back is miraculously pale and smooth and unharmed, and not for the first time she appreciates the magnitude of whatever it was Peter's father created all those years ago. She props him up as gently as she can manage, hesitating a little bit when she peels off enough of it to see his chest, feeling her cheeks heat up.

Why is she so embarrassed? She has seen him like this before—seen much more of him before, in fact. This shouldn't be any different, it _isn't_ any different, but the blood rushing to her face and the clumsy way she keeps snagging her fingers on the suit says otherwise.

She is over-thinking this. It's probably because he is unconscious. She feels jumpy, as if he will wake up with a start, see her undressing him and freak out. She stares at him tentatively—he is clearly not going to wake up anytime soon, she shouldn't even be worrying about this, she was doing this at _seventeen_, for god's sake, how does it make any sense that she has gained this inconvenient idea of propriety at twenty?

She only takes it off as far as she needs to, in order to uncover the bullet wound—she leaves the bottom half of the suit untouched. Kneeling this close to him she can still see the faint outlines of where Connors dragged his talons across Peter's chest. Unconsciously she lifts a finger to one, tracing it, wondering if it will ever heal, wondering if she'll still be trapped in his orbit when it does.

The apartment almost looks unlived in, a stark difference from Peter's bedroom back home. Here he has nothing on the walls, nothing in the shelves except a few unopened containers of ramen noodles and textbooks. There is one chair and a little fold out table where she supposes he eats and studies. He does have a few pictures in frames—one of him with his aunt and uncle, another one, much older, of him with his parents, but the frames almost look a little lost on the otherwise bare counters.

The closet is the only sign someone even exists in this tiny space—that, at the very least, is bursting with clothes, most of them probably waiting for a good washing. There's something comforting in looking at all his old familiar t-shirts and jackets. It's nice to think that he's still the same old Peter she remembers, even if they are bizarre versions of themselves around each other now.

It isn't hard to find first aid kid, mostly because it's wide open and spilling its contents, looking very recently used. She finds some antiseptic, which is, in typical Peter fashion, unopened—she supposes it's only a formality when he heals as fast as he does, but it wouldn't kill him to be a little more responsible about his injuries.

She finds a clean washcloth and wipes up most of the blood, careful to avoid the wound itself. A small groan escapes him when she applies the antiseptic and she freezes for a moment, afraid he'll wake up, but he doesn't.

Once the wound is wrapped she considers the sheets, which are decidedly ruined forever. She untucks the corners and manages to shimmy them out from under him, guessing that Aunt May must have been the mastermind behind the plastic mat under the sheets that has spared the mattress from ruin. She has spare sheets in her apartment. She gives him a once over even though she knows he will survive for thirty seconds on his own, then darts across the hall to her place to grab them.

When she comes back she sees him at a distance from the door and her heart hammers in her chest. She lets her mind wander to a place where it's normal to see Peter half-naked on a bed, the afternoon sun streaming through the window, nobody here to stop her from taking long, selfish looks at him.

Just as quickly as she lets the thought slip in, she shakes it off, focusing on the sheets. She can't quite make it look pretty with him lying there—it's more difficult to shove them back under him than it was to pull them out—but it's a lot better looking than it was before, at least.

After she finishes she stands there, feeling useless, listening to him breathe. She wonders if she should go, but that seems so melodramatic, like something a martyr would do—fixing everything and then ducking out to make him feel guilty about it. It's something she might expect from MJ, she thinks uncharitably. Despite everything, Gwen and Peter are past all the game playing and secrecy that sometimes comes with two people caring for each other—there is nothing left to hide, everything that could possibly influence their relationship is already exposed and acknowledged and present.

So she will sit here with him, exposed, acknowledged, and present, until he wakes up. As long as he is asleep she hasn't compromised anything—she isn't defying her father, or making things harder on herself, or ascribing meaning where there isn't any at all. She will sit here, however long it takes, the same way she has for the last two years.

* * *

So. Monday. I'm a little loopy between the food poisoning (from cookie dough, class act) and the aftermath of the Worst First Date Ever (to paint a picture, it started with meeting a guy who had seemed like a normal gentleman at a restaurant and ended with him yapping at me through his tobacco chew in a parking lot because I didn't want to go home with him on the first date, and also, surprise, a quick google search afterward revealed he'd been arrested for assault lots of times! I'm such a winner!). BUT it's an insanely beautiful day outside. And they finally announced the date of The Amazing Spiderman DVD release. So just like the contents of my stomach, things are looking up.


	7. Chapter 7

**Reckless**

* * *

When Gwen wakes up, Peter is gone.

The first few seconds of consciousness are some of the most disorienting of her life. She remembers pulling up the lone chair next to his bed, she remembers perusing one of the textbooks that they have in common, and she maybe remembers resting her eyes for a second—but how and when she ended up alone on Peter's mattress with her boots neatly lined up against the wall and a blanket over her is a complete and utter mystery.

She roots around the mattress for her cell phone, but of course it wouldn't be on the bed, it would be somewhere in her purse. She finds it sitting neatly next to the bed and flicks it on.

It's four in the afternoon, and there are two texts and three missed calls from MJ, six missed calls and a voicemail from her mother, and a text from Owen, but absolutely nothing from one Peter Parker.

She glances around the apartment, looking for some sort of explanation. He wouldn't just—would he really just leave her here? It's thoughtful and all for him to have put a blanket on her, but it seems abrupt and cowardly, and uncharacteristic of Peter. She finds herself gnawing thoughtfully at her lip, wondering if maybe she was completely off-base in thinking that he had somehow changed, that he seemed older and a little more put together. Maybe he is worse off than before. Maybe he _is_ the kind of girl who ditches a girl in his apartment without a word.

But Gwen doesn't want to think that. She _wants_ to have faith in him, the same way she always has wanted to, even when it seems like he is doing everything in his power to disprove it. But faith or no faith, it doesn't make her current predicament any less awkward.

She stares at his door as if it might open at any moment and solve everything, that he might burst through the door and save her from the burden of deciding on a next move, but of course everything is impossibly quiet and still on this New York afternoon.

What is she supposed to do now? Leave, or stay here and wait for him? Will he be upset if she leaves? Will he be surprised if he walks in and sees that she is still here? Should she just pretend to still be asleep, pretend there was never any decision to be made?

No, she can't do that. Gwen is terrible at pretending, first off, and even a lie as inconsequential as pretending to be asleep seems like an insult to them both.

In the meantime she reads the texts from MJ, not bothering to deal with her mother yet.

_Where are you?! _Reads the first one, followed up by, _You and Owen are ALL OVER THE INTERNET! Lucky!_ About three hours after that is, _But seriously, where are you? Your mom just called me, kinda freaking out over here._

_All over the internet. _Oh, God. Gwen shuts her eyes again. She had briefly considered this consequence, but now facing it in its entirety she can't believe how colossally stupid she was in barging past that police barricade. It's the kind of thing she would expect from herself back when this whole mess began, back when she was younger and had all these romanticized notions of right and wrong, but _now_—now she should have known better, should have realized it was going to cause more harm than good, the kind of harm that drives her mother call her six times and will probably drive Peter away for good.

_I'm fine,_ she texts MJ, and then sends her mother a quick message telling her that she's alright, that she's busy in class and she'll call her later. She sets down the phone and wonders why it's so easy to lie to everyone else in her life, the people she sees every day, but even after all this time she can't lie to _him_.

As if on cue, the door swings open. They immediately make eye contact. Peter does seem surprised, his eyebrows raising at the sight of her sitting up on the mattress, but the goofy half-smile that creeps on his face before he can look down is enough to reassure her that she isn't unwelcome as she feared she might be.

"I, uh—you want a bagel? I bought bagels," says Peter, holding up a bag.

"Bagels," Gwen repeats. It isn't funny, but for some reason she wants to laugh. Relief, maybe. Peter isn't making a big deal out of this, or settling in for some long talk about promises or time passed, he just went downstairs to buy bagels.

"Yeah. Plain ones," he says, setting the bag down on the chair she had been occupying only a few hours before.

"You—you shouldn't be walking around getting bagels," says Gwen, "you were just _shot_—"

"And feeling a lot better," he says, simultaneously sinking his teeth into a bagel and holding one out for her to eat. She takes it from him, dumbfounded. "Thanks for that, by the way," he says, once he has swallowed the first bite. "I … well, I got a little bit in over my head, and I really appreciate your help."

Her face is hot, and she has to actively will herself not to stare at his chest, thinking of how bare and familiar it was when he was just inches from her hours ago.

"Did you, uh—did you kick in the door, or something?"

She looks up at him. "Yeah," she says, a grin splitting on her face.

Peter grins back. "Badass, Gwen."

She bites her bagel, her expression smug. They chew in silence for a few moments, neither of them directly looking at the other, listening to a car alarm go off on the street.

She wonders how the rest of this encounter will unfold, knowing it can go one of two ways. Either they will say everything and say too much, or they'll say a few things and say nothing at all.

She casts a cautious glance at Peter but his expression is unreadable. He looks thoughtful, almost removed, but knows him well enough to expect that he will sigh slightly and turn to her and say something completely unrelated to the rather large, untapped issues they have spent the last few days not addressing.

"Were you at OsCorp today?"

Gwen feels her mouth twist. "No, I guess not," she says.

Peter nods.

"Why do you—"

"Has anything—" Peter cuts her off, then licks his lips, clearly trying to decide how to phrase whatever it is he is getting at. "I know you're not allowed to talk a lot about what goes on in there," he says, almost guardedly, as if he is afraid that she won't trust him with whatever information he is looking for, "but—has anything major happened in the last few days? Anything worth … well, anything worth trying to break in for?"

"What do you mean," asks Gwen, her chest already constricting. "What happened?"

"That guy I was chasing—I think he was trying to break into OsCorp." Peter rips off a piece of bagel that he stares at but doesn't eat. "In fact, I'm certain he was."

"That's—that's impossible." She looks to Peter for some sort of confirmation, because he knows as well as she does how tight the security is on that building, but he only shakes his head. "How could somebody _possibly_—"

"There's a tunnel. Under the city. The only access point is one of the underground facilities my father uses, it's how we got into OsCorp that night we found you in the weapons department."

Gwen addresses him slowly, trying to make sure she understands him before she lets the unpleasant sensation of foreboding settle in her stomach. "A tunnel—that leads into OsCorp—that nobody knows about. Except for you and your dad."

"And apparently my new friend," says Peter lowly.

Gwen tries to process this—her mind, of course, stuck on the horrible idea of someone breaking into their specific lab, finding their specific breakthrough, and running amok with it. She tries to tell herself that the chances are small that it's _her _tiny department with their tiny team and unpublicized work that the man is after, but at the same time she has a very real, nagging feeling that it can't be anything but.

She doesn't know why she doesn't tell Peter this. Maybe because she doesn't want him thinking that she is in over her head again at the hands of OsCorp, doesn't want him to tell her all the things her own father would be telling her if he were still alive, which would probably be to get the hell out of OsCorp and never go back.

"Is there a way to seal the tunnel? Some way to stop him from trying to get back in?"

Peter looks down at the floor, mumbling a bit. "My father is fixing it. He says."

"Oh," says Gwen. The whole situation with Peter's father was so surreal that she sometimes forgets it even happened. It doesn't surprise her that he stayed in touch with Peter, though. In fact, if she recalls, she was the one who had to convince Peter that he would. Peter, understandably, had very little faith in the man himself. "So your father's still in New York?"

"No, no. He just … now and then we meet up, I think he likes to keep tabs on me."

Gwen notes that even though Peter is trying to seem annoyed by it, his ears perk up and his nonchalant shrug is less than believable. She is sure that he is still on his guard around the man, but she is glad that he didn't let Peter down a second time, especially since it seems that he has had a hand in the majority of the weirdness that Peter has had to deal with ever since that spider bite. As much as Aunt May has tried to help him, as much as Gwen has fretted on the sidelines, they will never be as much help as the man who, for all intents and purposes, created Peter.

"That's the thing, though. We just happened to be meeting up in one of his facilities and—well, he had a bad feeling first, whatever this weird … sense that we have—"

"Spidey sense," Gwen says, nodding.

"—well, his is a little stronger than mine, I guess, so he took off into the tunnel first and I had to catch up but as soon as we chased it out into daylight, he had to leave, of course." Peter has to think for a moment. "And then … well, you saw what happened. The smoke. I couldn't see much of whoever it was, but he had a ton of smoke bombs and this mask he could apparently see and breathe through, which was why—well, why he beat the crap out of me, I guess," he says candidly.

He takes another bite of his bagel, but Gwen can tell by the rapid, unself-conscious way he is chewing that he isn't quite finished yet. "I met up with my father just now. Before I grabbed the bagels. He's working it out, the tunnel and everything, so you shouldn't need to worry."

Gwen looks at him and can tell by the way he sucks in his bottom lip that he is still worrying. She can't help but worry, too.

"We had a breakthrough with one of the projects," she admits to him.

He looks up, his eyes widening at her. "Yeah?"

His stare is so intense and serious that she has to look away, feeling another unwelcome blush creep into her cheeks. She doesn't want to alarm him. He already seems completely on edge about this.

"Not anything huge," she says, waving him off.

His face doesn't relax in the slightest. "You can't tell me, then?"

She can tell him, of course. She told her mother, she told MJ, she just about broadcasted it to the chemistry class she teacher assists for yesterday, but looking at him now she falters a bit. Nobody else in her life outside of OsCorp understands the magnitude of their breakthrough, and if she tries to explain it to Peter he will know in an instant, and start blowing everything out of proportion.

"It's fine," Peter mumbles, "you don't have to—"

"No, no, I can—"

"No, it's fine," Peter says firmly, trying very hard not too look insecure by forcing himself to meet her eyes. "I get it."

Gwen laughs nervously, and instantly regrets it. The silence that follows is awkward and unendurable. She feels the skin on the back of her neck crawling—he thinks she doesn't trust him, and maybe it's true, maybe she doesn't—she doesn't trust him not to try and insert himself in whatever this is, and for some reason she feels adamant about keeping Peter separate from her life at OsCorp, separate from everything, maybe. She needs him at arm's length. She needs to protect herself.

"About today," Peter starts, and that's how Gwen knows that she is right to keep her guard up, because here comes the lecture.

"I know," she says, before he can get any further, "it was stupid, and reckless, and I won't do it again."

He isn't finished. "It's not even that people have connected you to Spiderman, Gwen, it's that—I mean, you could have died. You could have been shot just as easily and you're just—you're just human." He is stammering in earnest for the first time since they started talking again, and his fingers are picking at what's left of the bagel, littering crumbs in his lap and on the floor.

"I'm sorry," she says weakly.

He shakes his head. "You scared the shit out of me. You have to _promise—_"

The word almost seems to split a chasm straight through the middle of the room, dividing them. Her eyes fly up to meet his in disbelief. _Promise_. She feels the blood in her arms, her cheeks, her neck starting to simmer. She doesn't need a reminder of what's at stake here, she's had a reminder every _day_ for the last _two years_ of living across the hall from him, of wanting everything she can't have, of living in a permanent state of freefall since she can't even remember when.

Peter tries to recover. "Just—you know what I'm trying to say, but I just really, really want you to understand that I love you, and I don't want you to get hurt."

And just like that, the anger dissipates. She doesn't know where it goes, doesn't know where anything she feels belongs. It is suddenly very difficult to swallow the bite of bagel in her mouth. She chokes it down with some supreme effort, staring at Peter out of the corner of her eye, trying to make sense of him.

It isn't that he hasn't said he loves her before—but the circumstances were different then, _they_ were different then, they were seventeen and probably at least one of them was on the verge of tears and if she recalls, they had both almost just died. She didn't doubt the sentiment then, of course, and she doesn't doubt it now, it's just that she never expected him to admit it again.

When he catches her gaping he frowns a little bit. Her heart thuds even louder—is it possible that he can just throw words like that into the air and not think twice about it? Has she missed some cue, some part of the conversation or some gesture that would somehow explain how he could go two years without talking to her and then tell her he loves her as casually as he would tell her that her shoe is untied?

"What?" he asks quietly.

She opens her mouth—to say what?—but her phone saves her, buzzing loudly on Peter's table. He deftly leans over and grabs it for her, then stares at the screen.

"Owen?" he says, and she can't help but be a little bit amused by the edge in his voice.

She takes the phone from Peter, seeing that, sure enough, it's Owen's name popping on the caller ID. "He's the guy who helped you out in the smoke earlier today," Gwen explains. "He—well, he followed me when I took off, and beat me there."

Peter's features seems to soften a little bit. "Oh—I couldn't really see his face. So you two—?"

"Yeah, yeah, he works with me."

Peter nods. "Are you gonna … are you gonna answer that?"

"Huh?" Gwen follows his gaze to the buzzing phone in her hand. "Oh. I don't—no, no, it's probably just a work thing, he'll leave a voicemail."

The call ends, and Gwen sets the phone down, expecting a little voicemail notification in the next minute, but instead the phone just starts buzzing as persistently as it did before.

"I don't mind, you should take it," says Peter, abruptly getting up and busying himself with something in the kitchen.

Gwen hesitates. It really is unlike Owen to even call her in the first place, let alone call her persistently. He knows enough about her to know she isn't very tolerant of that kind of thing.

"Hello?"

Owen is breathless. "Are you at OsCorp?"

She's on her feet in an instant. Peter must sense her alarm because he rounds on her, his eyes wide. "No. Why?" she asks, even though she has an unwelcome feeling that she already knows.

"There's been a break in. Gwen, you're not going to believe this. Somebody _broke in_ to our lab."

Gwen meets Peter's eyes instantly. He has heard, of course. She can't even be surprised when he mouths the words "Stay here" and runs for the door. It's still a little uneven from when she kicked it, so it slams behind him with an unexpected clatter.

"What—what was that?" says Owen.

Gwen purses her lips, deliberately turning away from the door. It will only frustrate her to look at it. "Nothing," she says. "Tell me everything you know."

* * *

Guys. I don't know where you all are, but let me just say. The weather is AWESOME here. Like, I wasn't drenched in sweat after my walk to class and people actually voluntarily sat next to me.

Also, just know. I should be studying for a massive bio test right now. Even put off the Glee premiere to get it done. And naturally, as is the order of things, I ended up on fanfiction instead. SENIORITIS FTW


	8. Chapter 8

**Reckless**

* * *

There are reporters _everywhere._

They have staked out the bottom of her family's apartment building and look positively hawk-like, near assaulting every small-to-medium sized blonde girl within a half block radius. Never before has she been so grateful for her intimidating doorman, who seems at least to be holding his own and stopping them from entering the building and pestering her family. Gwen ducks her head in the taxi and mumbles to pull over at the mouth of the private garage where she parks her car—there's an elevator there that will get her in unnoticed.

"Gwendolyn. Petunia. Stacy."

Gwen winces as she opens the door. It's an unfortunate middle name, the perfect kind to reserve for moments like this.

Her mother thrusts a newspaper in front of her—there's a grainy picture of her running into the smoke, and a less grainy one, much bigger and much more unmistakable, of Owen trying to lead her out of the crowd afterward.

_Man and woman step in to aid vigilante!_ screams the headline.

"I can explain—"

"And this isn't even the _worst_ of it—they've identified you, _publicly,_ might I add—what were you _thinking?_ Captain Johnson tells me you nearly could have been _shot_—"

"Captain Johnson?" asks Gwen, scrunching her nose. "When were you talking to—"

"And then you don't answer _any of my calls—_"

Gwen cringes again. "I'm sorry about that—"

"Oooh, Gwen's in trouble!"

"Bradley, _go to your room!_" says her mother, rounding on her youngest brother. They see two other heads poking out of the hallway and her mother adds, "All of you! _Now!_"

Gwen finally manages to shut the door behind her. When she turns around her mother is desperate, frantic, coming apart at the seams. She steps forward and takes Gwen's cheeks into her hands, searching her face madly, as if she is trying to find some evidence of insanity or other sufficing explanation for her behavior.

"Mom," says Gwen uncomfortably, and her mother releases her.

"Were you—Gwen, I just don't understand it, were you trying to prove you were brave, or did you just need attention, _please_, what is it, just tell me—"

"_No_," says Gwen, "Jesus, Mom." She came in here ready to apologize and calm her mother down but now she is slamming her bag to the ground and shoving off her shoes and doing it all wrong.

"Then _what?_" her mother demands, her voice high and shrill. "What on earth could you have _possibly —_"

"They were going to kill him!" Gwen says. "Did you not see what was happening? He was out _defending the city_ and the instant he gets a little bit in over his head, what—thirty armed police men outnumbering him when he can't even—"

"What do you _care?_" asks her mother, "What does it even matter to you if some man in a costume gets arrested?"

"Not arrested," says Gwen, "_shot_. They were going to kill him. Did you know—did you know that they're _blaming_ him for dad's _death_—"

Her mother crosses the room almost violently, the expression on her face as fierce as Gwen has ever seen it. "Stop that right now," she says, her eyes darting to the hallway where all of their bedroom doors line up. "Your brothers will hear you."

Every time her mother has used this tone with her in the past she has instantly backed down, her easy-to-please first child instincts kicking in, but now Gwen can only blink at her in disbelief. There is a beat between them, when Gwen's mother realizes that Gwen isn't going anywhere, and then realizes that she has blown her cover.

"You _knew_, didn't you?" says Gwen, incredulous.

"Yes," says her mother, her teeth grit, "and I don't know what it even _matters_ to you, but I couldn't tell you, couldn't tell your brothers, not when he's flying around the city night and day and they all look up to him the _horrible_ way that they do."

"You could have told _me_," says Gwen, her voice growing hoarse already from overuse.

"And what good would it have done?" her mother hissed. "What good would it have done for you to wander around the city and see the man who murdered your father just _swoop by_ every now and then—"

"_Spiderman didn't kill our father!_" Gwen screams.

Her voice echoes through the apartment like a gun backfiring. Her mother is rigid and shaking, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. Gwen knows that she has done something unforgivable. She knows that she has created a distance between them, drawn some sort of invisible, insurmountable line that will change the way her mother thinks of her forever.

When her mother finally finds her voice, Gwen almost trembles, afraid she will hear something like "you're just a kid, what do you know?", or worse, something like "get _out_", but instead she says to Gwen, her voice surprisingly even, "Regardless, your obsession with this freak is unhealthy."

Gwen's first instinct is to lash out again, but she knows that this is one of her mother's cheap tricks in an argument—shaming her by making accusations, deliberately using heated words like "obsession" and "freak." Her mother thinks she has caught onto something, that she has embarrassed Gwen into dropping the subject, but Gwen is older now, and much more invested in this than she has been in any of their few arguments in the past.

"It isn't obsession. It's my _conscience,_ it's the sense of justice and morality that _Dad_ always taught us."

Her mother flinches just as Gwen expected her to. She should feel bad, but she doesn't.

"I wasn't raised to turn my back on someone who needs help. And think what you want to, I don't care." Gwen's fists are so tight that her nails are digging into her skin. "I _know_ that Spiderman is a hero."

Her mother's face crumples. This isn't what Gwen was expecting.

"Oh, Gwendolyn," she says shakily. She crosses the room, arms extended for a hug. "You _poor_ girl."

Gwen stiffens. "No, what—"

"You're confused, I understand, it's been a rough year on you and the boys and you—"

Gwen reels back from her. "Don't touch me," she says.

Her mother freezes, her arms still outstretched and empty. "Gwen …"

Gwen just shakes her head. "I can't," she says. She wrenches her book bag up from the floor and jams her feet haphazardly into her shoes. She opens the door and hears her mother make a small noise of protest, but Gwen can't do her the charity of pretending to calm down, of faking a smile with her brothers over dinner and spending the night.

"You're wrong," is what Gwen says instead, and then she slams the door in her mother's face.

Her mother doesn't come after her, but Gwen is determined to get out of the building before anyone can stop her that she doesn't pay any heed to how she is going to leave, and as a result she marches right out into the chaos outside her apartment building.

"Gwendolyn!"

"Gwen Stacy?

"Over here, doll, look over here!"

There are a dozen people shouting at her, accompanied by an endless series of flashing bulbs in her face. Gwen squints at them, holding her bag closer to her body. For a moment she is caught so off guard that she can only stare at the spectacle in front of her—who _are_ these people? Why do they even _care?_—but once she tries to take a step forward and the crowd blocks her, her curiosity gives way to white hot fury.

"Move," says Gwen loudly, using her shoulders to barrel her way through them. Once she has reached the edge of the sidewalk she yells for a taxi, and mercifully sees a guy a hundred so feet away starting to pull over to the curb for her.

"Is it true that you're in love with Spiderman?" asks one of the particularly aggressive reporters, stepping in front of her right before she opens he taxi door.

The words _Fuck off_ come dangerously close to rolling off her tongue, but instead she shoves the camera lens to the side and says, "Get _out_ of my way."

She spends most of the drive back to her apartment trying to breathe, to organize her thoughts and find a way to approach her mother's disbelief. She thinks they both need time to calm down, she thinks she might not go home for awhile. She alternately thinks she needs to find some way to prove Spiderman's innocence, to decisively and loudly show her mother that she is wrong.

It's only after the taxi pulls up to her building that Gwen realizes she came home intending to mention the break-in at OsCorp to her mother, and ended up telling her nothing about it at all.

* * *

Half of MJ's toenails are bright purple.

"So … they didn't take anything?" MJ asks Gwen, blowing on one of her nails to dry it. It's Thursday and they are sitting in MJ's dorm, studying. At least, that's what Gwen is trying to do.

"Nothing's missing," says Gwen, to answer her question.

"I don't get it," says MJ. "Some guy … busted into _your lab_ at OsCorp, set off a smoke bomb, knocked out your co-worker—Jeannine?"

"Julie."

"—knocked out Julie, poked around for a few minutes and just—left?"

Gwen forces herself to stop gnawing on the sleeve of her sweater. "Well, we can't really see any of the security footage with the smoke, but it looks that way, yeah."

"You think it's the same guy Spidey was chasing? Because of the smoke and all?"

Gwen shrugs. "I don't know," she says, even though she fully does. The question reminds her, though, of how irked she is at Peter. She hasn't heard from him in two days, not since he went tearing out of his apartment and left her there with half a bagel and a panicking Owen on the other end of her phone. She knows he must be alive and well because somebody fixed his apartment door and she's almost certain it wasn't their lazy landlord—so where is he? Why hasn't he said a word to her about this matter that _highly concerns her?_

It doesn't help that strangers have been shouting questions and pointing cameras in her face for the past two days, and ordinary people have started recognizing her on the street as "that girl" who helped Spiderman. She feels a guilty pang, not just for Peter's sake, who did everything in his power to avoid this, but for her father's—this was surely his worst nightmare, surely the scenario he was imagining when he made Peter make that promise in the first place.

"I wonder if he's alright. He hasn't been out on the streets since that whole thing with you and Owen."

"I'm sure he's fine," says Gwen.

MJ frowns. "How would you know?" She untwists the cap of her nail polish and starts on a second layer. "For someone as Spiderman crazy as you are, I thought you'd be at least a little concerned, too."

Gwen can't help the flash of annoyance she feels at MJ—of _course_ she cares, she cares an infinite amount of times more than MJ ever will, so it is infuriating, almost like an accusation, to hear MJ talk like that. But she has to steel herself, remembering that MJ's remark is completely innocent and that she doesn't have the faintest idea of Gwen's connection to the man behind the mask.

"Well, the man has endured a lot worse," says Gwen, "so I wouldn't worry too much. He's probably just trying to lay low."

_Or completely and totally irritate his kind-of-ex-girlfriend by inexplicably falling off the face of the universe,_ she thinks bitterly, turning back to her textbook and re-reading the same line for probably the fifteenth time.

She wouldn't be this wound up, except that she hasn't gone into the lab since the break-in, thinking that Peter would be upset if she did before he reported back to her. Now she wonders what he was even trying to do when he ran out of the apartment so fast—the break in had already happened, what exactly was he going to do? She thought maybe he would try to watch the security footage, or that he would meet back up with his father and that they might try to figure out who exactly it was targeting Gwen's department, and initially she was fine to let him have a day or so to work that out before updating her.

Now it's been two days, and she is restless, she is pining for her lab equipment, and above all, she is annoyed.

Then again, she wasn't exactly the most forthcoming with him. Maybe Peter doesn't intend to tell her anything at all—maybe he hasn't found her because he doesn't want her to know.

"When are you allowed to go back to work, anyway?" asks MJ.

Gwen juts out her jaw. She's done waiting. "I could go right now, if I wanted," she says, almost to herself more than MJ. She shuts her book. "I think I'll go now."

"What?" MJ squeaks. "My nails haven't dried—"

"I'll be back in an hour," says Gwen, "is it okay if I leave my books here?"

MJ looks put out. Gwen knows it's partially because she can't help but get caught up in the media storm following Gwen around, and now she can't follow Gwen outside. MJ, naturally, thinks that the whole thing is very glamorous, and was most pleased to see that half of her face made it into a back page of the _Daily Bugle_ yesterday morning.

"Sure," says MJ. "And hey—watch out for yourself out there."

Gwen shoves all of her hair in one of Richard's old baseball caps that he left lying around MJ's dorm, and pulls a hoodie over her head even though it's probably hot enough to cook an egg on the pavement. "Can do."

* * *

Owen's the only one there when Gwen arrives. He is so surprised to be interrupted that he nearly topples out of his seat. He looks over at the door wildly, as if poised to defend himself, and only once he realizes it's her does he drop his guard and settle back into his seat.

"Hey, Gwen."

She shifts uncomfortably in the doorway. "Jumpy today?"

Owen's smile is tight. "I guess," he says. "I wasn't really expecting anyone up here, not after …"

"Yeah. How has Julie been?" asks Gwen, suddenly feeling a guilty pang for not having visited the woman in the hospital herself.

"Better," says Owen. He's peering into a cage where two of their resident lab mice, Bonnie and Clyde, are awake and running around. One of them is making the wheel squeak rhythmically and the other is greedily sucking water out of the tube attached to the cage. Owen sticks his finger in and rubs at the drinking one's head—the mice are pretty much useless in their department, but they all get a kick out of having them around anyway.

"It's just—I can't really wrap my head around it. Whoever it was, he didn't really break in. He got in using a security code."

Gwen shuts the door behind her. "Like—one of our security codes?" she asks, painstakingly trying to recall every and any moment she might have written her code somewhere, or mentioned it to someone, but no, she has never been that careless. She looks at Owen, but he only shrugs.

"Nobody recognizes it," he says. He points up to a piece of paper they have tacked on the wall by the door. "They posted it, just in case anyone knew—it's disabled now, of course."

Gwen isn't sure why she even bothers to look over at the wall, but he is pointing at the sign expectantly so she slides her bag further up on her shoulder and turns her head.

The code is five digits, unique and unmistakable.

"Nobody … recognizes this code?" asks Gwen, feeling an unwelcome foreboding prickle her neck.

Owen says something back to her, something trivial, something unimportant. Gwen stares at the code, hoping the old baseball cap obscures the shock that she knows she knows is contorting her face.

_Miss Stacy, this code is distinct and will grant you access to all the rooms in this building. You and I are the only ones who know it, but I trust you will use it with discretion. _

It's the code Gwen used that night the Lizard was rampaging the city to get access to the antidote. It's the code she used to break in to the weapons department when those robots were attacking the city. It's the code Dr. Connors gave her three years ago, when he first named her head intern and told her she showed some real promise here.

She hasn't used it in so long that she forgot it even existed. Now it seems to be leaping off the page, the font thick and black and accusatory.

It doesn't matter, whatever Peter has been investigating. It doesn't matter, because he will get nowhere—there is no trail leading back to Connors, nothing to connect him to the code that is responsible for this deed, nothing to incriminate him except one little intern he must have forgotten.

She doesn't need to wait for Peter to sort this all out. She can do this all on her own.

"Where are you going? You just got here—"

Gwen shuts the door behind her without answering, and is already halfway down the hall in the time it takes for her to dial the number of the mental hospital she knows Connors is currently residing in. She doesn't know exactly what his involvement is, if he planned for this to happen or not, but Gwen knows one thing for certain: Curt Connors has already taken something precious from her, and she will do anything she can to stop it from happening again.

* * *

Sorry it's been like a bajillion years since my last update. I've been being productive! School, job, plus I shocked the world by actually finishing some of my homework early and going to the gym every day this week (only because House reruns are always playing at specific times on the TV there and it's not on Netflix, but let's pretend I'm motivated and full of dedication to fitness instead.)

Anyone else see Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone and their little signs? They're so cute together I want to scream. Half of me wants them to stay together forever and make babies with freakishly large eyes and the other part of me is like MOVE ASIDE, HE'S MINE.


	9. Chapter 9

**Reckless**

* * *

They don't make Gwen wait very long at all to see Connors. She is probably only sitting in the waiting room for five minutes before someone ushers her in and tells her down the stairs and to the left, room number six, and to tell the attendant she has permission to speak with him in private. Apparently he has been on good behavior in his three years of imprisonment and has been granted that much liberty.

She has so little time in the waiting room that she has barely decided how she is going to approach him. Now that she is actually descending the stairs, she feels a little bit unsure of herself. Connors has been locked up since she was still in high school. How on earth could he be responsible for anything happening in the outside world? Who could even reach him in here, that they wouldn't have some sort of record of? She checked at the desk when she signed herself in—Connors hasn't had a single visitor in all of his time here. It really doesn't make any sense.

The only scenario she can think of is that Connors gave the code to someone else, before the whole morphing into a giant lizard and subsequent bio-terrorism thing happened.

She walks in, sucks in a breath, full of confidence and bravado that for a moment she can trick herself into thinking she possesses. But the instant her eyes lock with his, she feels this inexplicable fear that seems to radiate from the back of her neck, the closest thing to a fight-or-flight response that she can actually identify feeling.

This is the man who killed her father.

Suddenly she is not at all composed. Her knees are shaking and her teeth are grinding and as he looks up at her with moping, sorrowful eyes she feels the urge to ball her hands into fists and punch the expression right off his face—she doesn't _need _his pity, it is the very last thing that she wants in this world, and just knowing that he has been in this cell feeling sorry for her, feeling sorry for _himself_, makes her want to physically hurt him in a way that she has never wanted to hurt someone before. It is basic, it is primal, and as the attendant shuts the door behind them, it takes every ounce of Gwen's willpower not to strike him.

"Gwen." The man's voice is hoarse and tired and unlike she has ever heard it before. He looks sallow and sick. She thinks it is nowhere near punishment enough. "I know why you're here."

She neck jerks in a crude attempt to shake her head. Her muscles won't respond properly to the signals from her brain.

"No, you don't."

Connors closes his eyes and a weary sigh escapes him. She waits, and it feels like the room is absurdly small, because there is nothing else to look at but white walls and white bed sheets and this man who occupies every empty, angry space of hatred in her heart.

"Gwen," he says. "Words will never begin to express my regret—for what I did to you, for what I did to your family—"

"Save it," says Gwen. She doesn't want to hear this, doesn't want to think of him as something human, not now, not ever. She will not grant him the relief of apologizing.

"Gwen," he starts again. "Please—"

"Six, four, seven, eight, two."

"What?"

Only now does he look at her with that old alertness and curiosity she remembers him for so well. Unfortunately for him, he also does a poor job of hiding his guilt, and the way he is wringing his hands and not quite holding her gaze is all the confirmation she needs that he is involved in whatever happened a few days ago, or is at least very aware of it.

"You didn't think I'd still be working at OsCorp, did you?" she says, leaning in slightly, watching him squirm. "You didn't think I'd be there to recognize the code that broke someone into one of our most controversial labs, after one of our most crucial breakthroughs—did you?"

Connors at least has never been one to beat around the bush. "Honestly, no, I didn't."

"Who is it? Who did you give the code to, and what do they want?" she demands.

He shakes his head. "Gwen, please. It's better if you just stay out of this, for your own safety."

"Oh, because _that's_ always been on the forefront of your mind," she says. She tries very hard to keep her voice down, knowing there's an attendant not too far out in the hallway. "Don't you dare patronize me, Connors, not now. I have been through hell and back in the last few years. You tell me what's going on, and you tell me right _now_."

"I don't want you sticking your head into this—as long as nobody is hurt, I don't see why—"

"Nobody is_ hurt?_ Is that really what you think?" asks Gwen. "Because whoever it was you let in, they beat my co-worker unconscious—not to mention nearly got Spiderman killed."

At this Connors raises his eyebrows. "The Parker boy? Is he alright?"

Gwen feels her blood freeze. "You … know that … Peter is—"

"He wasn't exactly subtle about it," says Connors. "I hope he has been since."

Gwen wracks her brain for any instance Peter might have given himself away. Was it at the school, or before then? It occurs to her that the attack on the school might not have been random—she and Peter never really discussed it after the fact, but maybe Connors had known, maybe he was specifically looking for Peter to finish him that day.

"If you've told anyone," she says, panic suddenly bubbling in her chest, "if you _ever_—"

"Never," says Connors emphatically. "I owe his father debts that can never be repaid. The very least I can do is keep his identity a secret."

"How about confessing to my father's murder?" says Gwen. "Because the police are blaming _him_. He can barely show his face in the city without getting shot at."

"I have confessed," says Connors wearily. "Nobody wants to hear testimony from a madman."

"Try again," Gwen demands.

"I don't know how much I have left in me these days."

"What?" Gwen almost splutters, she is so enraged and shocked. "What do you _mean,_ you don't have it in you? You killed my _father_, you're responsible for the manhunt on the boy I love and you just _don't have it in you_ to fix any of it?"

Connors looks down at his hands. She can see dark brown spots sinking into his skin where there weren't any before.

"I'm dying."

Gwen wants to roll her eyes. "Aren't we all?" she says unkindly.

"No, Gwen, I'm _dying_." Connors lifts her head up and for the first time she really considers his face, how sunken and old it looks. How his one arm has almost shriveled with waste. "It seems there were complications after prolonged exposure to the serum that created the Lizard. My organs are slowly starting to fail."

Gwen is an intelligent girl. It doesn't take her very long to connect the dots.

"You need our project. You need those equations to figure out how to—what? Grow yourself new organs?"

"Re-grow them," Connors corrects her.

Gwen balks at him. "We can't do that."

Connors nods. "Not with what you have so far. But I can."

"What—what are you talking about?"

"The same reason why Norman Osborne was so adamant about keeping me on staff," he says, a noticeably bitter edge to his voice. "I'm a step ahead of everyone else."

"So you are the one responsible for the break in. What did you do? Give someone the code? Who _is _it?"

"I don't know," says Connor. "I don't know who he is or what he wants, or how he even gets in my cell."

Gwen shakes her head. "You have to be straight with me." He looks so tired and worn, just sagging his head pitifully in response, but she can't conjure the tiniest bit of sympathy for him. She throws her words out like a whip. "You owe me so much more than that."

"I'm telling you all that I can. There is a man—he is very tricky, using all these smoke and mirrors to sneak in here. I think he tried to break in to OsCorp and failed, and then he came back and struck me a deal. My code in exchange for whatever he could copy from the files in the lab."

"You think I'm going to believe this? Don't insult me," says Gwen, scowling at him.

Connors sighs again. It seems as if it is all he has the energy to do. "I'm not making this up."

Gwen's laugh is low and bitter. "Alright, then. Where is your miraculous cure, then, huh?"

The corner of Connor's mouth twitches. "He didn't come back. I had a feeling he wouldn't." He is back to wringing his hands, and pallor of his skin is so thin and weak that she looks away from him in disgust. "It was a foolish hope."

"A selfish hope," says Gwen.

"You're young. Everything is still black and white for you. You'll see—the world, particularly the scientific world—there is never a clear line between right and wrong."

Gwen shakes her head. She will not be patronized by this gutless, egocentric man. "You're full of excuses, aren't you?" she says, already finished with this conversation, fully aware that she will not get anything more useful out of him. She props her bag higher up on her shoulder.

"Gwen," he says, sensing that she is trying to leave.

She raises her eyebrows at him impatiently.

"I'm glad at least … to see that you're doing well. That you're rising to the potential that I always knew you had. You've always been a remarkable young woman."

The comment is so paternal, so proud, that it sounds like he is taking some ownership of her and her success. She doesn't want to be tainted with his pride or opinions of her. She hates him for saying it, but hates herself more for the ghost of a girl she hasn't quite left behind, the girl who used to shine under his praise and guidance and still craves it to this day.

Her hand isn't quite yet on the doorknob when she pauses. "I hope it doesn't work," she says, surprising herself with the malice in her voice. "I hope you die, and I hope it takes a very long time."

* * *

She walks almost aimlessly back to MJ's dorm. It starts to rain but she hardly notices, glancing up at the sky in brief acknowledgement when the first few drops fall and then ducking her head down and walking through the summer storm.

She knocks on MJ's door absent-mindedly. MJ answers and looks confused to see Gwen in the doorway—the two of them rarely bother to knock.

"You're soaked, let me get you some clothes," says MJ, opening some drawers and tossing an old t-shirt and jeans in Gwen's general direction. Gwen catches them and takes a few steps forward, shutting the door behind her. MJ looks up and Gwen's face feels too heavy to smile back at her.

"Are you okay?" asks MJ, frowning at her.

"I—" Gwen considers lying and saying yes, but too much time has passed now. "No."

"Hey," says MJ gently, "what happened?"

She shrugs a little helplessly. "It's been a bad week," she says.

Usually Gwen isn't much for hugging, but when MJ outstretches her arms and says, "Come here," Gwen accepts the gesture greedily, taking back every ill thought she has ever had toward her friend. Her mother is angry and Peter is gone and right now it feels like MJ is the only person in the universe on her side. She lets her head droop onto MJ's shoulder, with a kind of neediness she can't remember ever feeling, the kind that prompts MJ to ask, "Gwen, what's wrong?"

Gwen bites her lip. "Do you ever just … wonder if you're a bad person?"

She knows the question is absurd, but after her encounter with Connors she feels rotten to her core. She is hateful, she is cruel, she is no better than he is. It scares her to know herself this way, in ways she couldn't imagine.

"What are you talking about?" says MJ, separating from Gwen and looking her in the eye. When Gwen doesn't answer, just stands there in the doorway without any words left, MJ says, "I don't know what's going on with you, Gwen, but you're not a bad person. I can promise you that."

Gwen swipes the back of her palm at her eyes and takes a breath. "Thanks, MJ," she says. Even though her friend has no idea what Gwen is truly capable of, it feels nice to know that she still has somebody in her corner.

MJ asks if Gwen wants her to microwave some hot water for tea, or to find a movie to watch, but as Gwen wedges her wet legs into MJ's old pants she says, "Let's just … do homework," because she can't think of anything more soothing or monotonous than that.

"Ugh, I wish," says MJ, gesturing over to her computer. "I've been trying to finish this discussion board post for like a week, but I can't finish it until my partner posts his section, too."

Gwen peers at MJ's laptop, eager for the distraction. "Yeah? You tried calling him?"

"Over and over," MJ laments. "Texted, called, emailed. No answer. It's like the guy was wiped off the face of the earth."

"Wouldn't you see him in class?"

MJ shakes her head. "He keeps skipping. No surprises there," she says, rolling her eyes. Then she perks up a bit, drawing in a breath as if she has just realized something. "I forgot—you know Peter Parker, you guys are friends, aren't you?"

"Yeah," says Gwen, wishing she didn't blush just at the sound of his name. "I guess, why?"

"Well, he's my partner," says MJ.

Gwen's head snaps up. "How long have you been trying to reach him?" she asks, hoping she doesn't sound as panicked as she suddenly feels.

Her nose scrunches. "It's been, like, three days."

Gwen does the calculation in her head. The first day was the day of all the commotion, the day he was shot, but the next two days, she doesn't have the faintest idea of where he has been. She thought he was blowing her off intentionally, but now that she thinks about it, that is really unlike Peter.

"Could you try calling him or something? Maybe he'll pick up if it's you."

"Sure," says Gwen. Her phone feels slippery in her palm. "I'll try."

* * *

Friends, I'm going to be honest here. I'm updating this in the middle of an enormous lecture hall full of freshmen. Let this serve as two lessons: number one, never ever delay taking your easy level coursework until senior year, because there are babies everywhere, and number two, there comes a point in your life where you should maybe be concerned about the shits you're not giving, and that point is probably most likely when you're updating your Spiderman fanfiction in full view of 400 people behind you.

I'm getting my wisdom teeth removed tomorrow. Fair warning, since I'm about ten chapters ahead of what I'm posting, so in about ten chapters, when you catch up to me, the plot might take a significant twist into a unicorn-infested beautiful rainbow Vicodin-induced haze. In case you want a preview, sources tell me that a My Little Pony x Spiderman crossover actually exists somewhere on this site. I will be going to it now. In class. Like a responsible adult.

Stay in school, kids. Stay in school.


	10. Chapter 10

**Reckless**

* * *

The weekend comes too fast, and still there is no sign of Peter. Gwen tries not to worry too much. No news about Peter might be troublesome, but no news about Spiderman could only be good news. Still, she scours the papers every day, and cranes her neck to see every newscast playing in coffee shops, wondering where he could possibly be.

They are still in their first few weeks of classes, but Gwen's workload has picked up considerably. She can usually juggle her schedule between exams and her job at OsCorp and tutoring, but with the added stress of being a temporary media sensation, of having her lab broken into and subsequently facing her father's murderer, she finds herself barely able to come up for air, let alone go knocking on Peter's door every other hour.

On Friday her mother ends their stalemate to text her and tell her that Captain Johnson is coming to dinner on Monday, and she is expected to behave like a twenty-year-old young lady and set an example for her brothers. Gwen never answers the text. She knows she'll have to go, of course, but she dreads it a little less knowing that her mother is pacing the floors, wondering if her picture-perfect daughter will let her down or not.

On Saturday Gwen tries Peter's cell for the fifth time, and for the fifth time it goes straight to voicemail. She knocks on his door just to be safe, and then she pulls out her cell and finds his aunt's number.

"Gwen," answers Aunt May warmly, as if she and Gwen are old friends who habitually chat on the phone. "So nice to hear from you."

Gwen is a little thrown off by the reception. She stands in her hallway for a moment, her mouth open, not quite sure what to say. "Hey, Mrs. Parker," she says eventually.

"Please, I told you to call me Aunt May."

"Aunt May," Gwen corrects herself, her tongue feeling thick. "Listen—have you—is Peter in Queens, by any chance?" she asks.

There's a pause on the other line. "What's going on, Gwen?"

"Nothing," says Gwen, unconvincingly. She bites the inside of her cheek. Now she is frightening an old woman. Did she seriously just call Peter's aunt without a decent excuse when she started asking questions like this?

"Gwen," says Aunt May, her voice lowering. "Peter isn't in Queens. And I'm guessing you haven't seen him in Manhattan, either."

Gwen closes her eyes. She can't lie to this woman. "No. I haven't."

She listens to Aunt May exhale loudly on the other line. "When is the last time you heard from him?"

"Um." Gwen doesn't know why she feels self-conscious admitting this, but after taking a second to form the words, she says, "Well, after that attack with the smoke I was in his apartment with him for a little while."

Aunt May makes an appreciative noise. "He called me that night, I remember."

"And then—well, after he heard about the break-in at OsCorp, he left really quickly, and that was the last I saw him."

"And that was—"

"Tuesday," says Gwen. Neither of them says anything for a moment, and the longer the silence goes the more anxious Gwen feels, realizing that he is unaccounted for on both ends of the river. "I'm sorry," she says, "I didn't mean to call you like this, I don't want you to worry—"

"No, I'm glad you did. Please. _Always_ call me when something like this happens."

"Alright," Gwen agrees.

"And call me the instant you hear anything from him, would you?" Aunt May says, her tone a little gentler. "I notice he always has a way of finding you before he finds me."

* * *

Sure enough, approximately five hours later she finds him roaming the streets.

Any other weekend she wouldn't have spotted him at all—but this particular Saturday she had agreed to meet with a high school student she tutored a little further uptown, so she isn't at all in familiar territory when she sees a shadow lurching in an alley. At first she draws back hesitantly, considering crossing the street to avoid whoever the concealed figure is, but then a person comes stumbling out looking as unthreatening and pathetic as a person can possibly be

"Peter?"

He flinches, but doesn't quite look at her. She has to jog over to him to fully get his attention.

"Hey," she says, trying to get a good look at his face, which he has fixed squarely on the sidewalk. It's dark out, but she can tell his hair is unshowered and sticking in unsightly directions, and that he probably hasn't changed his clothes all week.

He won't look at her. She feels a bubble of impatience in her chest threatening to burst, so she grabs his arm. "Where have you been?"

"Nowhere," he says defensively, shrugging her off. She gives him a moment, and sure enough, his shoulders relax just slightly and he turns to her and says, "Everywhere." His eyes are red-rimmed and desperate. "I can't find my father. I think something is wrong."

"Oh." This isn't what Gwen was expecting. "You mean—he won't answer his phone, or something?"

"It's not just that—I checked, I checked all the places we usually meet and he didn't bother to clear up any of his stuff, it's all just lying there, so I know he didn't mean to leave," says Peter in a rush, as if he needs to defend his father, needs to convince both Gwen and himself that the man didn't go willingly like he did when Peter was a kid. Peter's expression seems to sink further with every word he gets out. "I just—I have a really bad feeling about this."

They hit the light of a streetlamp and she takes a step away from him. He is visibly shaking in the September heat, and there is a sheen of unhealthy sweat on his forehead. She doubts that he has slept much since last Tuesday, if at all.

"Your father can hold his own," she says.

Peter shakes his head vehemently. "Something's _wrong_," he says, louder this time, sounding a bit crazed. He is unintentionally attracting attention toward them. Gwen grabs his arm and he lets her steer him closer to the side street, away from the people and the streetlights.

"What have you been doing?" she asks. "Have you just been out looking for him all this time?"

Peter nods, his eyes darting around them as if everything moving is a potential threat.

"It's been almost five days, Peter," says Gwen, hoping this will knock some sense into him. It doesn't. "You need to call your—" Gwen stops, deciding the better of it. She'll call his aunt later. He is in no position to be comforting his worried aunt on the phone right now, he is making so little sense that it would probably only make the situation worse.

When Peter still doesn't answer her, she says, "I'm taking you home."

"I can't," he says. Even in this state he is solid as a rock. She tries to grab his wrist and pull him along but he doesn't so much as budge.

"Peter, look at yourself. You're burned out. You have to come home."

"You don't understand," he says, frantic. "My father—he wouldn't just give up on me like this, I have to—"

"Tomorrow," says Gwen. "You're useless right now, what would you even do if you even found him? Your father wouldn't do this, he'd at least be smart about it—"

At that precise moment a shadow falls over them and they both glance up. Gwen's first thought is that it is impossible, and it must be Peter's first thought, too, because a strangled noise escapes his throat as they watch a fully identical, spandex-wearing Spiderman soar over them, swinging webs from building to building until he is out of sight.

Peter's eyes are wild. "You—you saw that, right? You saw that. Tell me you saw—"

"Yeah," says Gwen, her stomach knotting unpleasantly.

"Holy _shit_."

"Peter … "

"I have to go," he says, the words sounding like an apology. "This is crazy, you know I have to—"

"I know," says Gwen, "but please—be careful."

He nods, ducking into the alley again, out of sight. For a moment she wonders if she should really just let him go like this. He is in no state to be fighting, and who knows what else this imposter is capable of if he is already swinging on webs? She stands there, thinking maybe she should have tried to stop him, maybe she still should. But even if she does, what authority does she have? She isn't anything to him, not really. She can't ask him to do something or not to do something because she doesn't lay any claim over him, hasn't in years.

Before she can mull it over very long, though, the real Spiderman emerges from the alley, shooting out above her. Gwen watches him until he ducks out of view, which doesn't take very long, and then she walks into the alley and dutifully collects the clothes he has abandoned by a dumpster.

She continues her walk to her family's apartment for their regular Saturday dinner, already knowing how the next few hours will unravel: she will sit through dinner, tense and uncomfortable and itching to check the news report on her phone—she won't because one of her brothers will rat her out in an instant, so she will excuse herself an unnecessary number of times to check it out of sight and find nothing relevant to Spiderman, or worse, something incredibly relevant and foreboding that will make it impossible to stomach whatever elaborate meal her mother has thrown together.

Once Gwen reaches her apartment building she is relieved to find that there are no longer any reporters. The interest in her story has died down considerably, and Gwen has a feeling that if the imposter Spiderman is spotted, the interest in her will be squelched for good.

She considers calling Peter's aunt, but decides she will wait until after dinner. She doesn't want to scare the woman. Telling her that she ran into Peter just long enough for him to rush into yet another fight will do nothing to calm her nerves.

"Gwendolyn," her mother greets her stiffly.

Gwen feels herself slouch a bit. "Hey." She looks around for one of her brothers, thinking that their antics will smooth some of the tension, but they all seem to be engaged in a loud video game down the hall.

"I'm sure you've heard about Spiderman," says her mother, before Gwen can even set down her bag.

Gwen raises her eyebrows. She knows she shouldn't take the bait, but this time she has to. "What?"

Her mother thrusts her phone toward her. The headline on the site she has pulled up reads: _Spiderman robs a bank!_ The time of the story is an hour ago, before Gwen encountered Peter, before they watched the imposter swing overhead.

Gwen grits her teeth. Peter doesn't need this right now—it will only make his situation worse.

"That's not Spiderman," says Gwen.

Her mother's expression shifts from smug to irritated. "Of course it is," her mother snaps.

"It's not."

"And how would you presume to know that?" her mother asks, stalking into the kitchen to take care of something on the stove. Gwen slips off her sandals and follows her.

"I just know," says Gwen stubbornly.

Her mother doesn't have to turn around for Gwen to know that her face is impatient and strained. "You talk about this guy like you actually know him. Do you realize how you sound? It's starting to concern me."

Gwen doesn't answer.

"Really, Gwen." Her mother sets the spatula down and lets whatever is in the pan sizzle, turning to look at her daughter. "I just—"

"Mom. Please, let's … drop it."

Her mother takes a beat, her jaw working tensely. "Alright. I shouldn't have brought it up." She doesn't move for a moment, perched by the stove, staring. Gwen considers how this seems from her mother's perspective—her mother, the parent that never knew Spiderman's identity, who will never understand how she stands by and watches in terror not for New York's superhero, but for Peter Parker, as he constantly toes the line between life and death.

Maybe she does sound a little crazy, from her mother's perspective. But Gwen can't help but defend him, especially when she knows her mother is wrong, whether she knows it or not.

"Help me crack some of these eggs?"

It's the closest thing to a peace offering Gwen is going to get, so she scoots off her chair and plucks an egg out of the carton, cracking it deftly with one hand. She sees a telltale smirk from her mother out of the corner of her eye. Gwen has always sensed that her mom was somewhat disappointed when Gwen took after her father more than she ever took after her, but there is no doubt where Gwen learned her nifty tricks in the kitchen.

"School must be keeping you busy, I haven't heard from you all week," says her mother. "How did that coffee date go—what was his name, Owen?"

"Oh," says Gwen. "It, uh—it was fine."

"Just fine?" says her mother knowingly.

"Yeah." Gwen cracks another egg and then collects all the empty shells, heading for the trash. "Hey, you remember Peter Parker, right?"

Her back is turned to her mother, which is good, because Gwen winces as soon as the words escape her. She doesn't know what made her ask, but she used to tell her mother everything and it's like an old reflex kicking in.

"After that whole scene on the rooftop, how could I forget?" her mom asks, referencing the rather passionate kiss she interrupted after the one and only dinner Peter had at their place.

"Ah, yes. That Peter Parker," says Gwen. "He goes to my school."

"Oh, did he transfer or something?"

"No, no," says Gwen, absent-mindedly poking at the vegetables sizzling in the pan with the spatula. "He's been there the whole time."

"Huh. You haven't mentioned him." Her mother seems very careful not to bring up the rather effusive argument Peter had with her father that night, instead saying, "Isn't he a smart young man? I remember you telling me he was second in your class."

"Yeah, back in high school, he was."

"Well, invite him for dinner sometime. We'd be happy to have him."

This is how Gwen knows that her mother is desperate to see her dating again—if Peter Parker becomes a better option than no boy at all. Gwen can't help but smile a little bit.

"Maybe," says Gwen.

Dinner runs smoothly after that. Gwen's mother is in a much better mood, the boys are actually well behaved for once, and Gwen manages to leave her phone alone and keep her growing anxiety hidden for the entire meal, even when her mother says nobody can leave the table without trying her dessert, which is especially chewy and takes an absurdly long time to eat.

"Can we watch _The Simpsons_ now?" her brother asks with a mouth full of the unidentifiable gooey substance.

Her mother's eyebrows crease slightly, either from the choice of entertainment or the less-than-polite method of asking, but she seems tired, so Gwen isn't all that surprised when she relents and says, "Sure."

Her two younger brothers both leap up for the television, while the oldest, Tyler, stays behind to help them with the clean-up. Her mother calls for the others to come back and put their dishes in the sink, something she never had to do before their father died, but they've already turned on the television. It has switched from whatever setting they put it on for video games to normal viewing, so for a moment the volume is

"Just moments ago, witnesses outside of this Bank of America on 116th watched what appeared to be Spiderman fighting _himself_—onlookers report that the masked vigilante was spotted attempting what would be his third robbery of the night, when yet another Spiderman swooped in and stopped the heist—"

One of her brothers switches the channel. Gwen and her mother very pointedly don't look at each other.

"Gwen's right, you know, Mom," says Tyler gently.

Both of their heads snap up at the sound of his voice. There is no trace of his trademark smirk or his customary antics. He is staring at their mother somberly, and Gwen doesn't need to ask to know that he has heard them arguing, not just tonight but last week as well. Gwen holds her breath, both aching with gratitude that there is someone on her side and wishing that Tyler wouldn't say another word.

Tyler looks so grown up, almost like a man. Gwen wonders why she didn't notice it happening all these years, but he has never looked more like their father when he opens his mouth and says, "Spiderman's a hero."

There is hardly a moment before her mother reacts, shaking her head. "Damn it." She throws her napkin down and is already visibly crying before she stalks out of the kitchen.

She and Tyler sit in the kitchen for a moment, listening to _The Simpsons_ and the sound of their mother's bedroom door slamming. Gwen flinches. Tyler does not.

"Let's—let's clean up," says Gwen, the chair whining noisily as she pushes it back and stands up.

Her brother follows her lead and they collect all the dishes, stacking them up and taking them to the sink. She turns on the water and they wordlessly start scrubbing off all the grime and putting the plates in the dishwasher. They're on the last dish when Gwen finally breaks the silence.

"How did you—when did you—"

"It's kind of like you said," says Tyler, shrugging a little, in a good-hearted, naïve sort of way that just about breaks Gwen's heart. "I just know."

* * *

Sorry it took so long to update. I haven't been writing much because, well, the terrible pain in my jaw. Apparently one of my lower teeth was way more impacted than they thought and I've been in all kinds of agony with half a face that is as bruised and as wide as the moon. It was so bad my boss asked me to leave on Monday because she thought I'd frighten the children. I've pretty much been walking around with a baseball cap and not making eye contact with other humans for a week. My only solace is that today a small child at work said, "Miss Emma, you're pretty, you should be a butterfly with wings for Halloween."

I mean, at two years old it's hard for them to have standards, but it's better than "haha, you look like Monica on Friends when she wears the fat suit" (thanks, family) so I will take what I can get.

IN OTHER NEWS, my friend just got cast in Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark on BROADWAY! I am over the moon with excitement. I haven't seen the musical yet, and was kind of reluctant to buy tickets since they're kind of steep, but now obviously I'm going to New York and whatever time I don't spend in the theater will be spent crawling around Chelsea, looking for Andrew Garfield or his Black Audi whose license plate I may or may not have memorized.

Grwarrwrwar how my puffy, mutilated cheeks pine for that man.


	11. Chapter 11

**Reckless**

* * *

Gwen finds two things at her doorstep when she arrives home. One is outside her door—it's a piece of cake wrapped in tinfoil on a paper plate with a note from MJ that says, _Hope you're feeling better—got this at that bakery you like!_ Gwen can't help but smile, thinking that a girl who grew up in Queens probably shouldn't be so naïve as to leave a dessert out in the open in a city full of people just looking for an invitation to steal something. She figures the visit must have been recent, seeing as it's still here.

Only after Gwen balances the cake, unlocks the door and sticks the dessert in the fridge does she see the little note that must have been wedged under her doorframe. She only recognizes that it's from Peter because the handwriting is so sloppy.

_Sorry for today. I called my aunt. I have to figure out who this guy is. I couldn't catch him. I'll call as soon as I can. _

Gwen feels her face grow as red as a tomato as she inadvertently crushes the note in her hand. She should be annoyed, she should be angry, but she's standing here with her stomach fluttering like an idiot because Peter Parker left a note in her door, and is going to _call_ her.

She takes a breath and fixes the note, smoothing out the corners, trying to gain some perspective. She can't let herself fall into this pattern again—she knows better, and Peter should, too. She doesn't know how this semester all of their painstakingly careful measures to avoid each other suddenly fell apart, she doesn't know why it's happening now and not last year or next year or tomorrow or never at all, but somehow she has always known it was inevitable.

That's the worst thing to admit to herself. She hasn't truly let him go, not once in these last few years. She never dated, and neither did he, and she knew that. She watched. She always watches. And in his own way, she knows he does, too, and it scares her and thrills her to think of it. Sometimes she thinks they will never be able to find other people; sometimes she is afraid this won't be finished until one of them is dead.

She lays back on her bed and texts a thank you to MJ. She closes her eyes even though her clothes are still on, just experimenting with the idea of sleep, and a few brief moments are enough to know she won't be able to settle down anytime soon.

* * *

Monday comes and Peter still hasn't resurfaced. Gwen knows this because he never calls, but she also knows this because MJ has officially received a "C" for her discussion board post now that Peter never responded to it in time for her to put up a second post. There is some comfort in knowing that Gwen isn't the only one annoyed at Peter Parker.

Gwen and MJ are eating in a dining hall when a couple of freshmen girls sit next to them and start loudly gossiping about the two Spidermans.

"I think there have been two all along," says one of the girls. "Perfect cover, right? Now nobody knows which one is good and which one is bad, but the truth is, they've been waiting for this all along."

"That's crazy, Lissy."

"But think about it! Genius, right? The police were right to be shooting at them! "

MJ looks at Gwen, rolling her eyes. She jiggles her tray and motions to a free table that just opened up, and Gwen follows her to it, her fists curled against the plastic of her own tray.

"They're idiots," says MJ.

Gwen nods, squishing a fry between her fingers. She thinks of her brother the other night, calling Spiderman a hero, and it makes the urge to pour her ice water on top of those girls' heads a little less demanding.

"I just can't believe it." Gwen takes another bite of her food, chewing it angrily, not even tasting it. "They don't even _know_ him."

"Well, neither do we," says MJ. Her eyes drift away from her plate and she shudders almost imperceptibly. "But who knows what would have happened that night if he hadn't stopped that robber."

"Yeah," says Gwen.

"It's funny, he sounded kind of young, now that I think about it. I mean, weren't you expecting him to be, like—I don't know, not like, super old or anything, but I at least thought he'd sound a little bit more like a _man_, you know?"

Gwen finishes chewing another bite. "I thought he sounded perfectly manly," she says, trying to make the comment sound offhanded and failing miserably.

MJ's mouth curls into a grin. "That's because you _looove_ him."

Maybe it's the sleep-deprivation, but Gwen actually laughs outright, remembering how MJ teased her about Peter with the exact same intonation only a few weeks ago. "Maybe I like him a little," Gwen says, letting herself slouch and smile a little bit and actually act like a girl for once.

MJ smacks her hand on the table definitively. "That's it. We gotta find you a real guy, Gwen, not an inaccessible one who runs around in spandex!" she says, not at all appreciating the irony of her words. "How about that Owen, huh? He was cute. And he basically walked through _gunfire_ to impress you."

"No, no, he wasn't trying to—no," says Gwen, shaking her head, even though she knows it's true.

"Oh, please. He practically had puppy dog eyes. Haven't you ever once considered—"

"Hold on, my brother's texting me," says Gwen. She pulls out her phone. It's from Bradley, her youngest brother, the one who really is too young to even have a cell phone, but it's New York and who can really blame her mother for giving her one with madmen crawling around the streets all the time? She opens the text, thinking it might be serious if he has broken a rule to text her in the middle of the school day.

_Left sci proj at home plz bring it mom at work will kill me!11!_

"Which brother?"

"Bradley. He left his science project at home, I think, and wants me to bring it to him." Gwen looks down at their half-finished meals. "Sorry, you mind if I duck out?"

"No, it's fine. You want company?"

"Nah, you've got class in like an hour anyway, right?"

MJ moves her jaw in frustration. "Yeah. Maybe Peter Parker will be there so I can sock him in the jaw."

Gwen laughs, harder than she probably should. "I'll see you later."

Ten minutes later Gwen has taken a cab up to her family's building and is waiting for the elevator to scale the twenty floors. Ordinarily she would walk, but she knows Bradley, for all his obnoxiousness, really does take school seriously, and Gwen doesn't want to risk him losing points on the assignment. And that aside, she doesn't want to discourage him from texting her for help. Her mother has enough on her plate these days now that she is working again and doesn't need this kind of hassle.

The elevator dings when it arrives and she steps out, fumbling for the apartment key in her bag. She twists the key into the lock but it appears the door is already open. Gwen supposes there is a chance her mom came home for a lunch break, and although she sort of dreads encountering her after outburst on Saturday, she figures she had better just make amends now before she has to come to dinner again tonight.

The door opens, and when Gwen takes a few steps forward she gasps

Captain Johnson is shirtless on her living room couch.

Captain Johnson is _shirtless_ on her _living room couch_.

When he sees Gwen his entire body seems to flinch. "Gwendolyn—" he stammers, but Gwen has already backed into the doorway and dropped her purse and the keys with a loud crash.

"_Mom!_" Gwen screams.

Captain Johnson is frantically groping around the coffee table, his hands latching onto what appears to be his shirt and jerking it up so violently that a vase falls to the floor, partially smashes, and then noisily rolls on the hardwood floors as Gwen continues to scream for her mother.

Her mother spills out into the hallway, her own shirt not quite secured on her body and her pants alarmingly unzipped and unbuttoned. She takes one look at Gwen and her eyes widen like moons.

"Gwen," says her mother, her voice shaking, "just hold on a minute, sweetie—"

"Are you—are the two of you—"

Captain Johnson has thrown on a sweater and is grabbing his keys. "I'll call you, Helen," he says lowly.

"No, no, you_—hold on here!_" Gwen shrieks, still blocking the door. "What the hell is going on, are you two seriously—?"

Her mother flounders in the hallway, alternately between Gwen and Captain Johnson, a man Gwen had previously grown to respect and look up to over the years who is now fiddling with his god damn belt in her foyer and looking more humiliated than she has ever seen anyone in her life.

"You're _screwing_ each other, aren't you?"

Gwen has never seen her mother's face harden like this before. "That's none of your business."

Gwen is so stunned that her mouth falls open. She splutters uselessly for a moment, then spits out, "Jesus fucking _Christ—_"

"Language!" her mother barks.

"Are you _fucking serious right now?_"

"Gwen, if you would please just calm down, you are completely overreacting—"

"I'm overreacting? My mom is fucking some guy in our living room and I'm _overreacting?_" she demands, not even stopping for one moment to consider whether or not there is any truth in her mother's accusation. Her blood is boiling, she can practically _feel_ the hurt, the betrayal, the frustration that has been just simmering under the surface for far too long threatening to erupt. Her mother is _fucking_ the man who is trying to kill Peter. She suddenly hates them both, hates this man for trying to replace her father, hates her mother for letting him.

"I'm very sorry you had to find out this way, Gwendolyn," says Captain Johnson in that calm, practical manner that she has seen him use in action a dozen times, that voice that typically reassures even the most strung out teens on meth or crazy paranoid gunmen, but Gwen isn't having any of this shit. "We were planning to tell you and the boys at dinner tonight."

"Count me out," says Gwen, wrenching her purse from off the floor. She swings the door open and for extra measure she turns back and says, "You can play pretend with my mom if you want, but you will never be _half _the man my father was."

Then she slams the door behind her, thinking the noise should be at least a little bit satisfying, but it isn't. And to add to the already sinking pit in her stomach, she has completely forgotten Bradley's science project and she can't go back inside now, she just can't, no matter how guilty she feels about letting him down.

She thought maybe she would drop by OsCorp today, but suddenly that is the furthest thing from her mind. She finds herself wandering back to her apartment. She needs to be alone, she needs some time to think about this or some time to not think about it at all. It's fine when she's walking but every time she has to stop at a crosswalk she _sees_ them, sees Captain Johnson perched in her living room half-naked like he _owns_ the place, sees her mother red-faced and hair all tangled and _ew, God, yuck_, the light changes and she darts across the stopped traffic with her head ducked down walking as fast as she can.

When she reaches her apartment building she practically runs up the stairs. She's out of breath and already furious when she sees Peter Parker standing in the hallway, rooting through his pockets with his cell phone in his hands.

"_Really?_" is all Gwen can manage, because here is this boy who said he would _call_, and is decidedly alive and present and trying to get into his apartment and _not calling her_.

His head snaps up at the sound of her voice. "Hey," he says, holding up his phone. His eyes are tired but his hair is wet and his clothes are different. She walks straight past him—she's not angry really angry at him, she's just angry at everything, but he's here and nobody else is and maybe he deserves it a little bit.

"Hey, whoa," he says, jogging to catch up with her. "I was literally just calling you, listen, your phone's about to—"

Sure enough it starts buzzing in her hand. She lifts it up and sees his name on the Caller ID, and hits reject call since he's standing right there anyway.

"See?"

"Great. Thanks."

Peter puts a hand on her shoulder. "What's going on, are you—you're mad at me?"

"No, Peter, I just—"

"You can be mad at me. I mean, I get it, I owe you a huge explanation—"

Gwen finally shoves her apartment door open. "I'm not mad at you," she says, trying to keep her voice even. She walks into her apartment and he shuffles in the doorway. "You can come in."

He shuts the door behind him carefully. "Well what's going on, then, did something happen?"

"_Nothing_," says Gwen petulantly. "Nothing, it's—what happened to _you_, anyway? Did you find your dad?"

"Don't change the subject."

"Seriously, did you—"

"No, I'm going back out tonight," says Peter. "Tell me what happened."

She feels her book bag sliding down her shoulder and jerks it back up. "I—" The idea of it still so disgusting to her that she can't even look Peter in the eye when she says it. "I saw my mom … and some guy … in our apartment."

When she looks up at Peter it's clear from his vacant, slightly curious expression that he has no idea what she's getting at.

"They were sleeping together," Gwen elaborates.

"Oh," he says, his eyebrows shooting up comically. He throws his hands up, maybe to make some kind of gesture to comfort her, but then he just sort of stands there awkwardly and she can't really blame him. "Uh."

"Sleeping with a guy my dad used to _work_ with," says Gwen, and now the anger seems to come in another fresh wave. She lets the bag slide off her shoulder and thunk to the ground. "It's disgusting, I mean—I grew _up_ with him, he was practically my dad's best friend."

"Jeez, Gwen … that really sucks," says Peter.

"No, it doesn't just suck, it's—_ugh!_"

"Hey," he says, trying to calm her down, and when she turns to look at him it almost makes her laugh, because he looks ridiculous himself—his eyes still red-rimmed, his whole posture exhausted and a little crazed, a noticeable stubble that she has never seen before that only seems to exaggerate the whole effect of him. "Do you want to go for a walk or something?"

"No," says Gwen, shaking her head.

"We could, uh—I don't know, get a milkshake?"

"_No_," says Gwen, and the back of her eyes start stinging because right here and right now this boy she has loved and tortured herself over for so long is trying to help her, is actually trying to spend time with her, and now this whole thing with her mother has ruined everything.

Peter's expression is pained, obviously trying to think of some way to make her feel better and knowing he is falling short. It used to be so easy, so natural. She thinks of a time even when they might have claimed to hate each other that she could fall into his arms and just let herself cry, but she knows it won't happen now and so does he. She doesn't even know how their bodies would fit together anymore.

She looks up at him. It's odd, but with that sort of dazed, sleepy look about him he almost looks eighteen again, and she almost feels eighteen again. It isn't the first time she has felt like she is existing on two different planes almost, or between two: the time when she and Peter made sense and then all this in between time where she has been waiting for it to make sense again.

"Do you want me to leave?"

She closes her eyes. "No."

"Okay." He doesn't move and neither does she.

"He's trying to kill you," says Gwen. "The guy my mom is—he's the new captain. He's the one setting the police after you."

Peter digests this with surprising ease, nodding his head in understanding.

The next words feel like a confession. She has only known for a week, and it is nowhere near her fault, but somehow just because she was there that night she feels guilty for not having realized sooner, for not having tried everything she could to defend him. "They're after you because they think you killed my father."

Gwen holds her breath, anticipating his reaction, but Peter just Peter nods again and says, "I know."

"You—you know? Have you known the whole time?"

"Yeah."

"Jesus, Peter," says Gwen, "why didn't you tell me?"

He shrugs. "What good would that have done?"

It's near exactly the answer her mother gave her when confronted with the same question. Gwen opens her mouth to protest, to say that he had no right to keep something this monumental from her under some patronizing belief that he is doing right by her, but it's kind of nice, in a way, to come out of this weird, murky haze of the last few years and realize that he didn't forget about her, that he's been protecting her the whole time.

He is watching her carefully, expecting her to be angry. She looks away from him and is glad for the pressing and relevant subject change that occurs to her now.

"Tell me what happened with your dad."

"Nothing," says Peter, shaking his head ruefully.

"And the imposter Spiderman—"

"Gone," says Peter. He paces across her room and doesn't get very far because the place is the size of a shoebox. He looks at Gwen, and now that he is a little closer to her she can see his eyes are completely bloodshot and there are some shadows of recently healed bruises. "It's crazy, I can't even explain it. He has the same abilities as I do, the _exact_ same ones, the wall-crawling, the strength, the reflexes, it's like trying to fight myself. I have no idea where he came from."

"Your dad had a serum that altered your DNA, right? What if—"

"That _can't_ be it. It's destroyed, he made sure of it, and so are all the traces of whatever Fisher used—and besides, that can't be it, because whatever this guy is doing, it's not temporary. He robbed three banks that night." Peter runs a hand through his hair and sucks his lips under his teeth in frustration. "It's just—how am I supposed to find my dad if I'm chasing this lunatic all over the city? Who even _knows_ what he'll do next?"

"Peter."

He turns to her wildly, the sound of his name jerking him out of the rant he was mostly aiming at the window. "What?"

"Tomorrow is Tuesday," she says.

He waits for her to continue, looking a little agitated. "And?"

"You're going to go to sleep tonight. And wake up at a reasonable hour. And eat breakfast, and walk in the daylight, and _go to class_."

Peter looks at her, and his face is so sunken looking that for a moment she thinks he will cave. Then he shakes his head, almost imperceptibly. "What if something happens?"

"An hour, then," says Gwen. "Just take a nap or something. You can't keep going like this."

"I don't _have_ an hour—"

"I'll wake you up if something happens," says Gwen, holding up her phone.

He hesitates.

"Trust me," says Gwen. _Trust me_, even though she was not honest about the breakthrough at OsCorp, even though she still hasn't told Peter about her visit to Connors' cell.

She stares him down and she can practically imagine his feet sinking into the floor. She has seen him tired before, she has seen him beaten down, but not quite like this. It looks like exhaustion has seeped into the marrow of his bones and is weighing down his entire body.

It's still three in the afternoon and Gwen is supposed to go to class or go to work, she isn't quite sure which one without her planner, but she isn't going now. She motions to her bed. "Lay down. I'll be right here."

He is standing next to it so all he has to do is let his knees give a little bit and he's down. "You promise?"

Gwen waits until his head sinks down to the pillow. She suspects some part of him is already asleep before his eyes even close. She is glad he doesn't wait for her answer, because she would have to lie; Gwen has spent most of the last few years since her father's death trying not to believe in promises.


	12. Chapter 12

**Reckless**

* * *

Nothing happens, and Gwen is grateful for it, because she doesn't wake him up after an hour. Peter sleeps like a dead person. Gwen is careful not to leave the apartment, true to her word, and even though she fields several calls from work, noisily heats herself up some soup in the microwave and even drops a textbook on the floor at some point around eight-thirty, Peter hardly even moves. The only indication he is even alive is the rise and fall of his chest and the occasional snore every hour or so that always manages to take her by surprise.

Now that she is sitting here in her apartment with all this quiet, alone for all intents and purposes, she has finally reached some version of calm again. She will not and does not go to the dinner her mother wanted to have with Captain Johnson that night—Gwen wonders if it went on without her, and wonders how it went if it did, and what exactly they decided to reveal to her brothers. Gwen wonders how she would have reacted if she were told by two civilized adults at the dinner table rather than two partially naked, flustered people she barely even recognized in the foyer, but she figures it wouldn't have gone over well either way.

Maybe it's better, that she discovered it sooner. Now they can't sugarcoat it with her or pretend it's anything different than what it is, which is just flat out disgusting, in her opinion.

Given some time to think, she knows at the core of the matter she is being a little unkind to her mother. Her father is dead, after all. And it isn't fair to wish her a lifetime of loneliness to somehow keep the ghost of him preserved on the living room couch. But much to her mother's disappointment, she was and always will be a daddy's girl, and this feels like the worst way for her mother to go about replacing him—she grew up with this man, this man that her father risked his life with and drank an occasional beer with and let his kids call "uncle" as a joke. Of all the men in the world, of all the men in New York, _why_ Captain Johnson?

Gwen normally flicks on the television when she's eating in the apartment, and even though Peter could probably sleep through a hurricane, she doesn't want to push her luck. She props up the textbook because it's better than staring at the wall or staring at him, which she has found herself doing all too frequently in the last few hours.

It's true, what he has told her about his freakish healing abilities, and even though she has known that she has never gotten to see it in action before. Looking up every hour or so it seems like someone has wiped a magic eraser on his face, like the kind her mother uses in the kitchen to wipe marks off the walls. There are some places, like on his arm and just above his eyebrow, where the cuts have healed, the skin somehow gluing itself back together, but there are still some telltale remnants of crusting blood. The bruises fade into blacks and blues and yellows until there is nothing at all.

She wishes everything else in life were so simple, so fast and uncomplicated. She thinks maybe she and Peter are trying to act that way each other right now. Nobody has come close to tipping the fragile balance of their conversations by mentioning the past, or the glaringly large amount of time that they have spent ignoring each other. It's like trying to put a band-aid on a bullet wound, and she can't blame him because she is just as much at fault as he is.

Maybe they should never talk about it. Maybe if they bring it up it will only remind them of everything they have lost, of everything they still have to lose. But what's the point in pretending if she remembers every time he so much as walks into a room?

He moves just slightly in his sleep for the first time and Gwen braces herself, but he doesn't wake up. One of his fists curls around her sheets and his eyebrow twitches. She wonders what he's dreaming about.

Before she can wonder too long, though, she hears the doorknob twist. In the few milliseconds she has before the door opens, she freezes, imagining several unrealistic scenarios—a burglar? Waltzing up to the fourth floor? Or her mother?—or worse, Captain Johnson himself?

But then she sees a flash of red hair in the doorway and remembers with immeasurable chagrin at her own stupidity that she had invited MJ to watch a movie with her tonight after dinner, and it is, in fact, nine-thirty in the evening, just as they had planned.

MJ's eyes are like moons. "What—is that—a boy?"

"Um, yeah," Gwen whispers, hoping MJ will take the cue and quiet her own voice, but she doesn't. MJ's cheeks flame indignantly and she looks between the boy on the bed and Gwen and back again.

"That's _Peter Park—_mmmf!"

Gwen has never clamped a hand over someone's mouth before, and she thinks MJ will be too surprised to fight back, but without missing a beat MJ opens her mouth and bites down on Gwen's hand, hard.

"_Shit_," says Gwen, moving her hand away as she shuts the door. "What was that?"

"I'm from Queens, what the hell did you expect?" MJ says, wiping off her mouth and looking, to her credit, a little bit embarrassed. She recovers quickly and says, "Now tell me, what—is he doing—in your _apartment?_"

"Um," says Gwen, scrambling for some kind of excuse.

"You're _sleeping_ with him?"

Gwen's face burns and she clutches her arms to her chest defensively. "Of course not—"

"I'm _failing_ English because you're sleeping with a boy from our _high school?"_

"We're not sleeping together!" Gwen stammers. "And you're not _failing_."

"I will be in another week, thanks to him!" MJ exclaims, and Gwen can tell by the set of her jaw that she is not exaggerating, because MJ rarely gets this worked up about her grades.

"Okay, okay. Let's just. Let's go downstairs for a second and—"

"Open that door—I'm gonna _kill_ him—"

"Hold on," says Gwen, blocking the door with her body. "Just hold on for a second, would you?"

MJ shakes her head. "Gwen, if you're finally getting some action, that's all well and good, congratulations, but I am _going to kill him_, right after I force him to log on to our damn discussion board and post his part of the assignment—but I swear to _god_ after that he is _done_."

The door cracks open behind Gwen and she stumbles back as her weight shifts.

"Peter," says Gwen.

Peter blearily looks between Gwen and a very furious, beet-red MJ. "Uh. Hey."

"_You_," is all MJ manages to splutter, pointing a finger at him.

Peter steps out of the doorway and Gwen scoots out of his way, trying to think of some way to smooth over the situation, but judging by the way MJ's shoulders are quaking and the befuddled look on Peter's face, she can't really think of anything to say to prepare either party.

"I'm Peter," he says, extending a wary hand out to MJ.

For a second Gwen is afraid MJ has forgotten how to breathe. There are muscles on her face twitching that Gwen has never known to twitch before, and she is staring at Peter's hand as if he is offering her two-day-old roadkill.

"I know you're Peter," says MJ through her teeth, "but you apparently forgot who _I_ am, but who can blame you, when you haven't been to class in a _week?_"

Peter's face seems to register some sort of recognition. "Uh—are you in my English class?"

"Yes, and now I'm about to _fail_ it, thanks to you!"

It takes a second for Peter to understand, and once he does retracts the hand he was offering and awkwardly puts it at his side. "Oh, jeez. I'm sorry. You're Mary, aren't you?"

"Mary _Jane_," she says angrily, "and if you think you're gonna continue shacking up with my best friend while you're murdering my GPA, you've got another thing coming!"

Gwen can't help the slight amusement she feels when Peter backs away from MJ and stares at Gwen helplessly, his face more mortified than it has been since his awkward, gangly high school years. "No, wait, what?" he manages.

MJ has turned her attention away from him now, and is straightening out her shirt and pulling loose hair out of her face. She looks at Gwen and takes a breath to compose herself. "I rented that movie, we can watch it tomorrow." She touches Gwen's arm and stares at her meaningfully, green eyes blazing. "And don't you _dare_ put out until he finishes his homework."

They watch her until she walks down the hall and the door to the stairs slams behind her. There is a painfully long silence in which neither of them can look at each other. Gwen wants to burst out laughing, but she is afraid it might insult Peter in some way. She doesn't want Peter to misinterpret her and think she is aghast at the idea of them being together, but _god_, right now the awkwardness of it seems to be saturating the air.

"Thanks for your help back there," says Peter wryly, breaking the silence.

Gwen shrugs, releasing a breath. "Kinda sounds like you deserved that one."

They finally look at each other, and she is surprised to see how close his body is to hers—with her back turned to him she didn't even realize he had only been inches away for the whole conversation. Normally he turns away first, so she looks at him in anticipation of it, but he doesn't. The space between them seems charged and demanding and Gwen surprises herself by looking down at her shoes, feeling a weird pressure in her chest that she hasn't felt in a long time.

"What time is it?" says Peter.

"Oh, it's, uh." Gwen checks her watch. "Around nine-thirty."

Peter breathes out through his teeth. "You didn't wake me up."

"Nothing happened, I didn't have to," says Gwen.

Peter doesn't say anything, just stands there with his back leaning up against the closed door. His eyes are level with the wall across from them as if his thoughts are far from where the two of them are standing. She can't really tell if he is mad at her or not, which is an uncertainty she isn't used to. Peter is usually like an open book to her—even if they didn't share such a heavy, tangled past with each other, his face is especially traitorous in that he seems to have a hard time pretending otherwise when he is agitated. He has always been jumpy and expressive without meaning to be.

He isn't that way now. Just quiet and different and separate.

"I better head out," he says softly.

"I figured."

"Thanks for—"

"Yeah, yeah," she says, shrugging him off with what she hopes is a lighthearted smile, because she doesn't want to hear it. She doesn't know why, but in the aftermath of these moments where they are weirdly vulnerable and open with each other she is always embarrassed, as if she has given too much of herself away in too short of a time.

He looks like he's going to walk away, nudging his foot forward. "Maybe I'll see you around this week?"

Gwen shifts her weight onto her other foot. "Sure," she says, not quite believing him. She thinks about telling him that her mother has informally invited him to dinner again, then decides not to before the thought even fully crosses her mind. "Be careful."

He laughs lowly. "You always say that."

She doesn't know how to answer him, so she watches him cross the hallway and jerk open the door to his apartment, thinking that the reason she always says it is because she is always the one getting left behind.

* * *

Owen's face is as white as a sheet when Gwen walks into work the next morning. Not for the first time, they are the only two people in the lab, being the only early risers of the group, so she immediately asks what is wrong.

"Nothing," he says, pulling at the collar of his shirt.

She looks around the room, just to make sure that they're alone, then she sets down her bag and approaches him. He can barely look at her, his eyes flitting from the floor to her face to the counter in rapid succession.

"Are you sick or something?"

"No," he says, his voice low and miserable.

Gwen doesn't want to press him any further, because if it is something personal that he doesn't want to share, she would rather not pry it out of him. She doesn't want to know personal details of Owen's life—not because she doesn't care, but because she would feel inadequately able to comfort him, because he clearly wants more from her than she will ever be willing to give. She sits down, casting him one last wary look, but resolves not to mention it again.

Until his eyes flit over to the mouse cage and linger there.

She follows his gaze and asks, "Where are Bonnie and Clyde?"

Owen's face almost crumples. "I …" He mumbles something Gwen can't quite hear.

"What?"

He wriggles uncomfortably in his seat, a breathy, strangled noise escaping him. "I'm a total idiot, Gwen, I shouldn't have—aw, man. Aw, jesus. I just. You can't tell anyone—"

"Tell anyone _what?_"

Owen's posture turns ram-rod straight, and he closes his mouth and shakes his head at her.

"Tell me," says Gwen, feeling inexplicably afraid. "Tell me what happened, tell me right now."

Owen doesn't move for a few seconds, but finally, with a stricken sort of resolve, he reaches into his open backpack. There is something square and plastic inside—a cage. "Don't … freak out," he says, carefully keeping it level as he can as he props it up on a lab table.

Gwen peers on the inside. At first she frowns, wondering what Owen's possible motives would be for stealing the lab's pet mice, but then she gets a closer look at Bonnie and Clyde and "mouse" might be the last word she would use to describe them.

She opens her mouth and a horrified squeak escapes her and Owen leaps to his feet and says, "Don't freak out, Gwen, I said don't freak out—"

"What did you _do_ to them?" Gwen demands, pointing a shaking finger toward the cage.

Bonnie and Clyde are now indistinguishable masses of fur and grotesque muscle and bone, as shapeless as dough. To make it all the more horrifying, they're still moving around and making little mouse titter noises as if nothing is wrong with them. She has never seen anything more inexplicably disgusting in her whole life, which is a feat, seeing as she has three younger brothers.

Owen buries his head in his hands. "I injected them with the—well, that night Julie and I were working, she had a serum ready to go before we did the technical trials, and the technical trials were a success, and you know how Bonnie has that tumor, so I—I guess I just thought—"

"Owen," says Gwen lowly, "does anyone else know about this?"

He shakes his head. "I don't know what to do."

Gwen opens her mouth to say something, but she is so astounded by the grotesqueness of their little bodies that she is struck dumb and staring at them. It looks as if every time they move she can see their muscle fibers shifting and reorganizing under their skin. It reminds her of playing with Play-Doh as a little girl.

"I should tell someone, shouldn't I?" says Owen. "Oh, god. I'm going to get fired."

"Did it work?" she can't help but ask.

Owen blinks up at her. "What?"

"The parts of Bonnie's brain that were damaged by the tumor—did they actually grow back?"

Owen shakes his head again. "I don't know," he says, "I was going to check, but then—then this happened."

Either Bonnie or Clyde looks up and makes an especially loud tittering noise in Gwen's direction. She cringes.

"This is pretty gross."

Owen laughs, a painful and jarring noise that seems to cut through the silence of the lab like a knife. "Yeah, it is pretty gross, huh."

Eventually Owen puts them back in his backpack. Gwen doesn't ask him what he is going to do with them, or if he is going to tell the higher-ups in the lab. She doesn't ask him anything else to do with it at all. But she can't help but wonder if, for all its awful drawbacks, this serum Julie created actually worked—and what it would mean if Connors got his hands on it.

When she gets up to leave, she walks over to Owen. "Maybe—maybe don't tell anyone about this," she says, unsure why.

Owen searches her face. "You think so?"

She nods. Something foreboding stirs inside her. She shouldn't be involved with this, in the grand scheme of things these two mice shouldn't even matter, but for some reason she can't shake off this feeling that whatever just happened is bigger than the both of them. "Yeah. For now. I think so."

Owen nods at her solemnly, and that's the end of the discussion. She packs up her things and leaves. Only after she hits the streets does it occur to her that maybe she should have asked Owen how much of that serum exists—if it was in the lab the whole time, and if Julie ever really meant to use it. Would anybody notice if it disappeared?

But she squelches the thought. If the guy who broke-in had any of that serum, they would know by now. Connors couldn't hide that kind of severe mutilation if he tried.

And besides, Gwen has other things to worry about right now. She has a mountain of homework, a discussion section of freshmen chemistry students to lead, all of the issues with her mother, and on top of it all, a certifiably insane ex-boyfriend in a spandex suit who seems to be toying with death every other night.

She forgets about the mice easily. She wishes she could forget about everything else.

* * *

Updating from a hotel room on my way to Nashville for the weekend! Trying to get famous and stuff. I'd say it's for my love of making music and the arts and all that mumbo jumbo but really I'm hoping I'll get _just famous enough_ that I'll bump into Andrew Garfield somewhere fancy where famous people go, like maybe the IHOP in LA. Obviously he'll see me and forget all about Emma Stone, because as a British man he will appreciate my passion for country music and foods nobody who wants to live past the age of twenty five should eat.

I'm so glad I have my whole future organized so neatly like this.


	13. Chapter 13

**Reckless**

* * *

The beginning of October is stressful and bizarre. Owen and Gwen never discuss the mice again, but in some weird way they're discussing it all the time. Every now and then he'll look over at her or she'll look over at him and they'll have to acknowledge in some silent, guilty way that they share the burden of this secret, this unthinkable thing that their serum did to these mice.

The true horror of it is that somehow they're still living and breathing and walking around as if nothing has happened to them. She doesn't like to look at them, even though she should be used to it by now, because it unnerves her. It's the kind of feeling Gwen walks around with all the time—this past month feels like it has left her just as lopsided, like all her insides are mush, too. She still isn't talking to her mother and hasn't visited home in two weeks. The imposter Spiderman is still wreaking havoc on the streets every other day, with attempted bank robberies and even a hostage situation, and even though he may be an even match for Peter it sure doesn't seem that way on the news. The imposter is far too willing to go to extreme, malicious lengths to stop Peter from interfering with his plans.

But Peter is alive, that much she knows from the broadcasts, and from MJ, who reported somewhat sourly that Peter finally started posting on the discussion boards and that if Gwen wanted to keep him around it was fine by her. She even suggests a double date at some point when Richard visits on a weekend. Gwen cringes at the idea of Richard and Peter in a booth at some diner together between the two of them and decides it's best to nip that idea in the bud.

"I'm not dating Peter Parker," Gwen protests after MJ brings this idea up for the third time.

"Mmmhmm," says MJ. "He was just naked, in your bed—"

"Fully clothed! Let's not rewrite history here!" Gwen exclaims, looking around wildly to make sure nobody on the street heard them.

"You never _did_ explain what he was doing there."

Gwen fiddles with her chemistry notebook. "He's my neighbor," she says.

MJ raises her eyebrows and Gwen can sense the oncoming sarcasm before she even opens her mouth. "Oh, that makes sense then, I totally get it now."

Gwen rolls her eyes. "He was tired, is all. We were hanging out and he was tired."

"And I guess he couldn't make it down the hall," says MJ. "Gee, I bet he had no ulterior motives there."

Gwen's cheeks burn. "You don't know him, he's not like that." Nobody knows that better than Gwen, she thinks to herself, somewhat miserably.

"He's a boy, they're all like that," says MJ, waving her off. "Anyway, let me know when you two are ready to fess up. It's about time you got a boyfriend, and I know all the cutest date places near campus. Finally I can be the one who tutors _you_ in something!"

Gwen cracks a smile. She can't lie to herself—she has wondered if she were more aggressive, more effusive, more like MJ, if Peter would have caved into her a long time ago. She has considered all sorts of scenarios. Just marching up to him on campus one day and grabbing him and kissing him. Showing up at a party he's at, getting wasted and using it as an excuse to pretend she doesn't know any better. The kind of thing that bolder or slightly less mature girls would do.

It isn't necessarily that Gwen has standards too high for this kind of behavior, but she is a terrible actress, and could never pull off this kind of fearlessness that she doesn't possess. She will always be uncertain and reading way too far into everything Peter says and does. So she lives in these unrealistic fantasies, these places where she runs into Peter on campus or at a party or places that she'd never actually see him, and does things that she'd never actually do.

A few days later she finally takes Owen up on his request to get coffee by stopping at the café in the student bookstore, which is the most casual location she could think of. Gwen orders some new-fangled iced tea and Owen gets a scone and they sit there for a little bit and pointedly discuss everything except for their jobs at OsCorp. With some relief she notices that most of his weird little quirks around her have all but disappeared, and he seems to have accepted the idea that she doesn't want anything more than a friendship with him.

They're discussing the school's new policy on student club formation when she sees a tuft of familiar brown hair about ten feet away, standing in the café line. It's been almost a week since she has seen Peter and she can't help the lurch of relief in her stomach at the sight of him.

He hasn't seen her yet, she can tell by the way he's slouching and staring up at the menu with his mouth wide open unselfconsciously. When his head turns a bit to the side she sort of lifts her hand, wondering if she should wave, but then Peter's face perks up and he gestures happily over not to her, but to Owen.

"Pete!" Owen calls. "Whatcha doing here, man? It's been like a month."

"Hey," says Peter, ducking out of line. He starts walking over, sees Gwen, and stops short. "Oh—Gwen!"

She decides to wave after all. "Yeah, hey," she says, watching as Peter looks between her and Owen, a confused half-smile on his face. She pats the open seat at their table, gesturing for him to join them. "I guess you two know each other?"

"Yeah," says Owen, "we went to middle school together, we run into each other every now and then. How's your aunt, Pete?"

"She's, uh—she's good, just started taking some knitting classes or something," says Peter, looking a little reluctant to sit down. He swallows noticeably and says, "I don't want to—if I'm interrupting—"

"No, no, sit down," says Gwen. Peter purses his lips but decides to pull out the chair and sit with them anyway. She wonders how Peter didn't realize who Owen was back when he ran through the smoke to help Spiderman, but she supposes it was too clouded for him to see straight.

"How's it been?" asks Owen.

"Good, good," says Peter, even though Gwen can see dark circles under his eyes and blood on the knuckles of his left hand. "I've been great. How about you?"

"Same," says Owen.

There's a beat in the conversation. "How do you two know each other?" asks Peter, without really making eye contact with Gwen.

Only then does it occur to her that Peter thinks he has stumbled in on some sort of a date. She has to hide her face with a napkin for a moment to recover, and thankfully Owen answers for her, with a chipper, "Oh, we work at OsCorp together."

Peter's features seem to freeze for a second, and then he laughs a little nervously. "Oh, yeah. You mentioned … a girl you work with, I just didn't realize."

"How do you know Gwen?" asks Owen.

"We, uh—we went to high school together," says Peter to his shoelaces.

"Oh, yeah?" asks Owen politely. "That's—oh. Oh, wait."

The boys look at each other pointedly, Peter with a sheepish expression and Owen with wide eyes. Owen laughs just as awkwardly as Peter and then says, "I get it. Gwen's the girl you—"

"I'm gonna get a scone," says Peter, leaping to his feet, "because I—well—the scones are really good here, right? That's what I heard, are the scones good here?"

Gwen's a little afraid to look up at him because her face is on fire, both embarrassed that these two boys in her life have obviously been discussing her and frustrated because she is dying to know what Owen would have said if Peter hadn't cut him off. Gwen is the girl who _what?_ She has never imagined that Peter would discuss her outside of maybe his aunt, and now that she knows that he has, she can't help her curiosity. How does he explain her to people? What does he say, how does he refer to her, and is it anywhere near the way she would describe him?

"They're pretty average," says Owen, referring to the scones.

"Oh, yeah?" says Peter, shifting uncomfortably, holding his backpack strap a little too tightly. "I guess I'll—it was nice seeing you, I'll probably go find lunch somewhere, but maybe … maybe I'll see you guys around."

"You sure, Pete?" asks Owen, but it's clear that he, too, is making an extreme effort not to look uncomfortable.

"Yeah, yeah," he says, ducking his head down as a good-bye. "See you."

"Bye, Peter," says Gwen, as if her smile could somehow smooth over the painfully awkward ordeal.

He looks up and smiles weakly. "Bye."

She waits for a few seconds after he leaves to look over at Owen, who seems to be fully engaged in the writing on their napkin holders, so much so that his eyes might as well be burning into the plastic.

"So you've known Peter a long time," says Gwen.

Owen nods without looking at her. "Yeah," he says quietly, brooding a little bit. She decides not to press the matter, because she doubts Owen will be very forthcoming about details of what Peter has said about her. If there is one thing Gwen has learned from all of MJ's impromptu lectures about her theories on men, it's that they don't like to talk about girls with other girls, and since Gwen is, in fact, the girl in question, she figures it would only double his reluctance to talk about it.

Eventually the conversation picks up again, and they part ways for the afternoon on amicable terms. Gwen checks her phone, wondering if Peter might have texted her or tried to call now that he has temporarily resurfaced, but no such luck. She considers calling him, but there is a part of her that is guiltily thrilled by the idea of him being jealous over a guy like Owen and maybe she doesn't mind leaving him in the dark about this. Let him wonder about her. It is the smallest revenge for all the years he has spent pretending she doesn't exist.

* * *

Gwen is studying with MJ late that night when she somehow dozes off sitting on MJ's uncomfortable, regulation dormitory chair. She only wakes up when MJ turns up the volume on the crappy little television in her room and prods Gwen awake.

"Mmwhat?" Gwen asks groggily.

"Look," says MJ.

All Gwen sees on the television is a raging fire at first, and then the camera pans out to focus on the firefighters and caution tape and a crowd that has been pushed far back out of the line of danger. She squints at it and rubs her eyes, trying to make sense of it, and turns to MJ because she can't see the scrawl running under the reporter with the details without her contact lenses.

"The two Spidermans are at it again, except this time it looks like the bad one basically blew up a building," says MJ.

Gwen wipes some drool off her chin, waking up faster now. "What? When did this happen, where is this going on?"

"Brooklyn," says MJ, "which is weird, because normally they're in the city. I think it started up like a half an hour ago, but nobody's seen either one of them since the explosion."

"Jesus," Gwen mutters under her breath.

"I know," says MJ.

Gwen wrenches her eyes away from the screen. "It's late, I should head back home," she says, clumsily gathering all of her books and shoving them into her backpack.

MJ scowls at the window. "It's raining."

Gwen barely hazards a look outside before heading toward MJ's door. She doesn't know why she is leaving, because there is nothing she can do to help Peter no matter where she is, but she can't be here and watch it happening on television with MJ sitting right next to her. She is sick of trying to keep herself in check whenever something happens to Spiderman. If she has to fret for the rest of the night, she would rather do it in the quiet of her own apartment.

She is soaked by the time she gets home and deposits her shoes by the door, not optimistic about them drying any time soon. She flicks on her television but the story is no longer top news and they are running some clip about a recent salmonella outbreak. Gwen wrings out her hair in the sink and washes the dripping make-up off her face and stares at her phone, wondering if she should call him, wondering if he'll think to call her.

Someone knocks on her apartment door. Gwen doesn't really think before she opens it, and then Peter is standing at her door, battered, bruised and burned.

She can barely suck in a breath before he interrupts her.

"Are you dating Owen?" he asks breathlessly.

She stands there, stunned. "Um. No," she says.

"And you don't—want to, right?"

Gwen gapes up at him. She thinks of all the things MJ would tell her—to be coy, to be vague, to torture him a little bit by not giving him a direct answer. But Gwen has never been as self-aware or controlled as her friend, at least not in front of this boy she has loved and ached for so long.

"No," she stammers after a moment. "Not at all, not even a little."

A slightly manic grin spreads across his face, splitting his lip and making the burn across his temple look even more gruesome. He takes a step forward and Gwen's heart starts thudding so loudly that she is sure that even without his heightened senses he could hear it from a mile away.

There is so little space between them that she has to crane her neck up to look into his face. Their eyes meet, and stay there for just a beat too long to be innocent, and all of a sudden everything is electric and on fire and she is pressing her face against his and kissing him in her open doorway.

For a moment she can't even feel anything, at least not physically. There is a part of her that cannot believe that this is real, that she isn't dreaming it, because hasn't she dreamed of such crazy, unrealistic things a thousand times before? It feels like her head is swimming and her stomach is falling out of her and her toes aren't touching the floor.

Eventually the door slams behind them. He pulls away, just slightly, maybe to look at her face, but she pulls him back in, gasping, reaching, because she doesn't want any kind of distance now, not even inches—their mouths crash into each other again, chins bumping and teeth almost gnashing ungracefully, but this is _it_, this is what it's like, all the hype and the stories and the vapid girls who say things like "it blew my _mind_" because Gwen can't even think of another way to describe this.

They're moving, moving quickly, and she is touching places she hasn't touched in years, hasn't touched ever—her hand is under his shirt, feeling the taut muscles of his shoulders, the curve of his spine, the ragged way breath enters his lungs in the brief moments they come up for air. He is warm and whole and _hers_.

He is less aggressive than she is, his hands exploring her almost cautiously, waiting for permission, and she presses herself into him further, impatient for him to understand that there is _nothing_ she won't give him because there is _nothing_ she hasn't given him already.

He pulls away for a second, his eyes electric and wild and so unlike the Peter she has come to know, the Peter who is determined and controlled and would _never_ let this happen. She almost throws her head back and laughs, but she can tell he is waiting for her to make the next move, to decide how far this will go—she grabs the sides of his shirt and presses him back toward her, and he winces as she stumbles backward toward the bed and she murmurs a "sorry," realizing that she has grazed one of the burns, but he mutters a less-than-coherent, "no, no, not sorry" and then they tumble onto the mattress and they are finished with words for a long time.

* * *

It's just really funny to me, because more than one of you commented on the last chapter asking for some action, even if it was just a little almost kiss, and I've been sitting here laughing my ass off because I've had this chapter written for almost a month, and what excellent timing!

Speaking of timing, I'm a real grown up now, as evidenced by the absentee ballot that just came in the mail for me today (first time voting in a presidential election!), AND I finally saved enough money to buy a car. A brand spanking new Honda Fit. If anybody knows something terrible about them, this would be the time to tell me, because it's actually happening on Friday. I've been saving for this car for almost as long as I've been on fanfiction ... which, in about a year, will be half of my life.

It's officially too late to be a real human, isn't it?


	14. Chapter 14

**Reckless**

* * *

She is glad she wakes up before Peter does.

She doesn't know why her immediate fear upon waking is that Peter won't be there. She doesn't experience any confusion, any of the usual disorientation that comes from waking up in an unfamiliar way. Before she finishes opening her eyes she remembers the entire night in vivid detail, from the moment she saw him standing drenched at her door to the moment their eyes finally drooped and the conversation got hazy and indistinct and they fell asleep tangled in each other's limbs.

Not enough time has passed for Gwen to decide how she feels about last night, but she knows that if he isn't still next to her, she might hate him forever. As she becomes more aware, though, she feels his arm under her neck and one of his calves against her toes and she opens her eyes and sees that he's still in her bed, snoring lightly beside her.

She freezes. She doesn't want to move and wake him. She wants this aloneness for a moment, for maybe more than a moment, to steel herself for what happens next.

Should she pretend it isn't a big deal to her? She doesn't want to scare him, doesn't want to make him feel like he owes her anything, but at the same time she doesn't want to risk giving him an excuse to treat last night the same way he treated all those nights he snuck into her window in high school—as something unexpected and guilt-wracking and complicated. She doesn't want last night tainted by stammered apologies and days or months or, god forbid, years of avoiding each other again. Last night was different—it wasn't just a kiss, it wasn't just falling asleep next to each other, it was _everything_, and Gwen might not be the most emotional girl on the planet, but if he treats this like it's anything less monumental than it is, she thinks the humiliation might be more than she can bear.

A few minutes pass. She wonders how long she can keep this up, this indecisive, torturous suspension in time. Would she do it all over again if she had the chance? Probably. Yes. Undoubtedly. _God_, she would, and that's the most upsetting thing about this, is no matter how he reacts to this, no matter what comes out of his mouth when he wakes up, she would do it again in a heartbeat.

With this realization she leans just slightly away from him and his eyes shoot open and she stops breathing, watching him and waiting.

"Hey," he says, his voice rough from sleep. He smiles at her, slow and easy, and she feels the muscles in her shoulders relax slightly. "How long have you been up?"

He asks it so casually that she feels inexplicably stricken and self-conscious, like she should be covering more of herself than the t-shirt she ended up falling asleep in. She doesn't know what she expected—she supposes she thought it would be like the first time they really talked, or the first time they kissed, or any of the other firsts, when he was awkward and stuttering and unsure, but he looks so at ease that she can't help the irrational fear that maybe this isn't the first time he has done this with a girl, maybe she is just one of many, maybe this isn't half as important to him as it is to her.

But no—it's Peter. She is being absurd. She knows this boy, knows him better than she knows anyone else, and she can't think of him that way. She takes a breath and says, "Not very long."

He shifts his body, prying his arm out from under her neck. She is struck again with an unwelcome, crippling fear that he will pull away from her completely, that he will untangle himself from her sheets and leave her in this apartment where every corner screams with his presence, but before the panic can fully well up in her chest he reaches forward and brushes a stray lock of hair out of her face. The gesture is so familiar and comforting that she thinks she might cry with relief.

There are a few beats of silence in which she isn't sure whether or not he expects her to say something, if one of them should initiate some sort of long discussion of what last night meant and how they're going to handle it and whether or not it will happen again, but Peter leans forward and kisses her lightly on the mouth and for the first time that morning she smiles. Maybe this doesn't have to be complicated. Maybe they can just be two normal college students, with the kind of love that is present and unplanned and doesn't require the over-thinking and worries of the last few years.

"I'm glad you came over last night," she says simply, because it seems safe and she still is feeling him out a little bit.

His grin widens. "Yeah, me too."

Gwen lets her head rest on the pillow again and they spend the morning talking and dozing and being so remarkably normal that sometimes she tricks herself into thinking it has always been this way. He tells her about the classes he mostly hasn't been attending and the job that he is trying not to neglect at the _Daily Bugle_, about all the terrible and occasionally hilarious things his boss says about Spiderman, about how he and his aunt learned the hard way last month that neither of them were seasoned enough to handle the jalapenos in some street vendors' lasagna. She tells him about her brothers, about how she hasn't spoken to her mother in the weeks since she caught him with Captain Johnson, about MJ and her ill-advised attempts to find legitimate auditions on Craigslist.

It's nearly nine o'clock by the time Gwen's phone buzzes on an automatic alarm. She has class in an hour, but she maneuvers herself slightly to turn it off and leaves it on the floor.

"You have to go?" asks Peter.

She shakes her head and burrows into the sheets. "Do you?"

"I probably should," he says, and it's hard to suppress the scowl forming on her face. "But I don't want to, so."

She relaxes and leans forward and kisses him again. She likes the way that he always seems surprised but pleased whenever she has done that this morning, his eyebrows shooting up like he can't quite believe it and his lips kind of curling into her kiss so she can feel him smiling.

"If I'd known getting under your skin was as easy as taking Owen up on coffee, I might have tried it a long time ago," says Gwen, feeling some of the boldness of last night creep back into her bones.

Peter tries to look indignant. "I'm not—it wasn't—I'm not jealous of _Owen_," he says.

"Good. You shouldn't be," she says.

"He talked about you, like, all the time," Peter groans. "I can't believe I never made the connection."

"I didn't know boys talked about girls."

"We don't," says Peter, "we talk about—sports and hammers and big cars."

"Seriously," asks Gwen, because she can't quite help herself, "what did you tell him about me?"

Peter opens his mouth and she can tell before he even gathers enough air in his lungs to speak that he's about to play dumb, so she prompts him and says, "That girl from high school who … what?"

He ducks his head down. "I didn't realize Owen _knew_ you," he says sheepishly.

She shifts so she's leaning closer to him. "So I'll just have to ask him, then?"

"No," says Peter quickly, and when he looks up and sees that she's kidding he cracks a grin. "Sheesh, Gwen. They were good things, okay? Trust me."

"Alright," she says, feeling a little bit giddy.

They maybe spend another half an hour in various stages of sloth and laziness in her apartment before he proposes grabbing a slice of pizza from the place down the street notorious for its dripping grease. A part of her is hesitant to ever leave this apartment, to ever leave these moments they just spent here exposed and unguarded without them inside to protect them from disappearing, but she's hungry and he's slipping his arms into his jacket sleeves and she knows she has to keep moving if any of this is going to stay real.

He opens the door and waits for her as she turns to lock it. She feels something on her ear and squeals as he kisses her from behind, reeling around to face Peter and his wide, mischievous smile. She forgets about the keys and leans forward and kisses him, right there in the open hallway.

Just as the kiss begins to deepen, all the muscles in Peter's body seem to contract. She braces herself, her heart already sinking. She hasn't been able to help herself from waiting for the moment he will realize what he has done, the moment he remembers the promise, the moment that has, unfortunately, come many times before this one. She starts to pull away from him—the pattern is so familiar. He will stare at her with those sorry brown eyes and try to collect himself and look tortured when she inevitably starts to cry, then he'll stammer and apologize and _leave_ and god only knows how long it will be until they speak again.

But when he steps back slightly, there is none of the stammering or the apologetic looks—his face is hardened and he turns and says, "Something's not—_shit_."

Gwen stifles a scream as she sees the needle hit Peter in the neck, then sees him near instantaneously falls down to his knees.

"Peter—" She's about to lean down and try to help him, but that needle came from _somewhere_. She looks around wildly but sees no one.

"Get _out_ of here," Peter says through grit teeth. "_Now_."

"I—"

She feels the pressure of the needle hitting her more than she feels the pain. The heat of it seems to radiate in her elbows and her knees and all the way down to her toes, and she doesn't even feel the impact as she hits the ground, just an ominous welling of panic in her chest that does nothing to stop her eyes from sliding shut and giving in to the darkness.

* * *

This time, Gwen is not glad to wake up before Peter does.

As she starts to come to, the only thing she is aware of is how her muscles are aching as if she has run a marathon, and how her head is practically screaming in protest before she opens her eyes. The room is badly lit, but not so dark that she needs to adjust to it. The walls and the floor are concrete, and there is a basin sink across the room and a metal bar nailed to the wall, where the other end of a handcuff attached to her hand is locked. Peter is only a few feet away, similarly shackled but still unconscious.

Gwen is surprised at how calmly she is assessing her surroundings, but before she can impress herself the panic slams into her with full force.

"Peter," she says, not even considering that they might not be alone. She shakes the handcuffs against the metal of the bar, hoping the noise will rouse him, but it doesn't.

She tucks her knees into her chest and tries to breathe, but thinking about breathing makes her gasp for air, remembering everything, remembering in full force that night two years ago when she was snatched on the way from school in plain sight and woke up in the supply closet in their gym hours later. This, right here, is what Peter has always wanted to avoid, what her father always feared.

She needs to calm down. She needs to prove that she can handle this. Isn't it what she has asked for all along? To have Peter, no matter what the consequences?

And here were the consequences, coming too soon. She looks at him, pale and limp in the yellow light, and bites back angry, terrified tears. It isn't _fair_. She has only had him for a second, she has only ever let herself slip _once_, and now she is being punished in the worst possible way.

She wonders who did this to them. She wonders how they even found _out_—not only Peter's identity, but her connection to him, as well. She squeezes her eyes shut in an effort to block out the terror that is paralyzing her, but it's useless, she can't imagine her way out of here. There is no clever, crafty way to get out of these handcuffs or out of this place. Gwen is a confident girl, a girl who has been praised for her intelligence and quick-wittedness her entire life, so that she has come to believe in some ways that she is capable of anything, but her talents are _useless_ here.

"Peter," she says again, louder this time. She tries to extend a foot to nudge him, but can't reach. "_Peter_—"

"Ah. I see that you're awake."

Gwen freezes.

"Don't worry about your friend there," says the figure. He walks through a door that Gwen hadn't noticed and when he slams it behind him it almost seems to blend into the wall. "He'll be awake soon enough."

Gwen is smart enough not to speak, or at least to delay it as long as she can. The man is fully in black, black pants and a black shirt, but from out of the holes in his sleeve and his exposed neck and head he is wearing material almost identical to Peter's Spiderman suit; if she hadn't worked on Peter's herself once, noting all the intricate details, she would never have noticed the difference at all.

His features are covered by a mask. Never did Gwen think she would look at the face of Spiderman and feel such immeasurable fear.

"You're not going to ask me why I brought you here, then?" The man has a slight accent, but Gwen is too terrified to try to identify its origins. He crosses his arms and cocks his head and even through the mask she can feel his unwelcome stare on her. "Or is it that you already know?"

Gwen swallows, hard, and tries not to look at him, but she is afraid that if she looks away she won't be prepared if he does something unexpected. Her eyes flit, just for a moment, back over to Peter, and she has a morbid thought that maybe this depressing, suffocating room will be the last time she'll see him alive.

"You know valuable information. Tell me. Tell me the identity of the Spiderman and neither of you will be hurt."

Gwen shuts her eyes, trying to recollect herself. "_What?_"

The man doesn't answer, and she has the impression that he is man who doesn't waste his words—although he may just be the most grossly informed man in the room. Gwen doesn't understand. If the man doesn't know who Spiderman is, why on earth would he take Peter and Gwen in the first place? What on earth could possibly incriminate them so much that it would warrant a literal _kidnapping?_

She opens her eyes, steeling herself to look at him and sucks in a breath. "You've made a mistake. Neither of us has any idea who Spiderman is."

"Do not try to pretend!" the man barks, and for a moment his accent becomes even more pronounced. He steps over to her and she flinches, because in the past these unpleasant situations have usually involved the even more unpleasant circumstance of having someone violate her personal space to an unforgivable degree, but to her surprise he stops about ten feet away from her. Somehow it doesn't make him any less menacing.

"I—I don't know what you're talking about," says Gwen again.

"The girl who saved Spiderman does not know who he is?" asks the man, his voice lower now. "What, and the boy who takes his photographs all over the city does not know either, does he?" he says, gesturing sharply to Peter.

"No," says Gwen as firmly as she can. "We don't know anything."

"You are in no position to lie to me now," says the man. He shifts his head just slightly and Gwen follows his gaze to Peter. "You care about this boy. He cares about you," he says, in such a cold, analytic way that it makes Gwen's skin crawl. "I wonder how many bones of yours I would have to break for him to tell me the truth."

Gwen knows if she lets herself breathe she will start gasping and give any illusion of her calmness away, so she holds her breath for a moment and listens to her heart thudding between her ears.

"You are a pretty girl. I would hate for that to change."

Gwen can't even swallow. She's afraid she might choke on the saliva collecting in her throat. "You've made a mistake," she says, sounding garbled and afraid.

He turns his back on her, but the slight relief of him looking away is quickly replaced by the anticipation of his next move. She glances over at Peter and has to suppress a gasp. His eyes are wide open and he is appears to be carefully, silently, attempting to break his shackles. For a brief moment he makes eye contact with her, just long enough to shake his head for her to turn away.

The clack of his handcuffs breaking is unmistakable. The man turns around sharply, but Peter is fast, faster than Gwen could ever have imagined. She barely even sees his arm reach forward and snap the chain holding her to the bar. She sits there stunned for a moment, with this strange, disorienting feeling that she is the one moving in slow motion as the man darts forward with unthinkable speed and tries to grab Peter by the wrist.

In an instant Peter wrenches his wrist out of the way and blocks Gwen by shoving himself between her and their captor. Gwen can't see Peter's face with his back turned or the man's face with the mask secure on their head, but there is an unmistakable beat of recognition, and then a low growl from the man: "_You_."

Peter lunges forward, reaching for the man's mask, but he's too quick and dodges and Peter seems unwilling to go after him and leave Gwen exposed. Gwen stumbles to her feet, anticipating the smoke before Peter does and looking wildly around the room for the door she knows is hidden against the wall. She sees a sliver of it, just a crack, and she starts running for it—sure enough, she hears a hiss as the smoke bomb goes off and sucks in a breath and holds it.

She slams against the wall and gropes for the doorknob just as the smoke surrounds her. She finds it and tugs. It isn't locked, but the door is heavy—she hears Peter croak her name from somewhere in the smog and she shoves the door open with her shoulder and screams "_Peter!_" with the last gasp of air in her lungs.

She turns around, trying not to double over from coughing, and perceives someone coming at her through the smoke. Someone who is too broad and too short and too angry to be Peter.

Her first impulse is to duck, and it turns out to be a horrible one. The man rams straight into her and she falls through the open door and slams her head on the concrete floor with a thud. The fall isn't enough to knock her out, but it's enough to disorient her and there's so much smoke that she can't breathe and she isn't quite sure which way is up.

When someone grabs her and tosses her across their shoulder like she is a duffel bag she opens her throat to scream but then she hears Peter croak an apology and she tries to relax, but really, this is awkward and embarrassing no matter who it is hauling her across what seems like a tremendous distance toward an exit.

They hit sunlight and spill on the pavement ungracefully, wheezing and gasping for air.

"Are you … are you …" Peter splutters. "Are you okay?"

She can't really speak so she nods through her coughs and squints at him through watery, stinging eyes. She turns back to the building they just emerged from, then out to the road, but she has no idea where they are and no idea what happened to the man so she grabs Peter by the arm and makes a limping, insistent motion for them to move down the street.

Peter doesn't budge.

She turns to him, ready to push him forward again, but his eyes are wide and fixated on the building.

"We've gotta _go_," she rasps.

He shakes his head. "Gwen," he says, looking at her with a haunted look she recognizes too well, the same one Peter wore for weeks after his uncle died. His whole body seems to quiver. "I think—I think he's dead. I think I killed him."

* * *

Sorry it's been a zillion years. I just had a lot of important things to do this weekend. Like nap and watch America's Next Top Model on Hulu while shoveling peanut butter in my mouth. We DID just start rehearsals for our show, though, AND I might have a job after I graduate! Because it's every little girl's dream to use her psychology degree to change the world ... as a receptionist.

My mom's like, "Why don't you just change all the names in your fanfiction and try to make it a book? Nobody would know the difference." Because web-shooting, spandex-clad teenage angst is a TOTALLY unrecognizable plot so long as I change their names to Peeter and Gwin.


	15. Chapter 15

**Reckless**

* * *

Peter stares at the building for another few seconds without a word, until they both see telltale smoke emerging from under the crack of the door they just burst through.

"Peter," says Gwen cautiously. As much as she sympathizes for him, she wants to get out of her _now_.

He nods, snapping himself out of his daze. In a calculated fashion he glances up around the street, then back at her, looking her up and down.

"We can't stay here," he says.

"I know. Let's go," says Gwen impatiently.

Peter shakes his head. "No, no. I mean Manhattan. We can't stay in Manhattan, at least you can't."

Gwen freezes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He looks down at her and toward a subway stop and says, "You're not wearing any shoes."

"What's that supposed to _mean,_ Peter?"

He knocks one of his shoes off from the heel and leans down to pry the other one off, then takes a shoe in both of his hands and extends them to Gwen. "Put these on, if you tie the laces really tight—"

She pushes the shoes out of her line of vision. "I can't leave Manhattan."

"You're going to have to," says Peter, with a brand of unrelenting certainty that she has never heard from him before. He sets the shoes on the ground by her feet. "If that man was willing to kidnap you because of one little stint in the media with Spiderman, god only knows what else could happen."

Gwen shakes her head and starts walking down the street barefoot. She has no idea where they are but it looks like Manhattan and she will walk until night falls to find a sign for the subway if she has to.

"Gwen," says Peter, jogging to catch up with her. "I just don't think it's safe for you here anymore—"

"No," Gwen says. Her head is splitting and her body is aching and she feels like she might just combust at any moment. "I go to _school_ here, Peter, I have a joband my family, I'm not going to drop everything just because of one nutjob, who is _dead, _according to you!"

Peter flinches as if she has smacked him and she feels a small twinge of remorse. For a moment she's afraid she has paralyzed him, that he's just going to stand there like some kicked puppy, but it's worse: his features contort and his voice gets so low and stern that she can't even summon the indignation to interrupt him.

"I don't know that for sure," he says, "and even without him, there are a hundred—a _thousand_ other 'nutjobs' in this city, and you have become a target, Gwen. There is something else going on here—I can't believe that he's the only one, that this isn't over, my dad's still _missing_ and I just have this feeling—"

"Oh, you and your _senses_ again," says Gwen, "your impeccable sense for danger, of course, you must know _everything_."

"What are you—" Peter stammers. "What are you getting at here, are you even listening to me?"

"Are you listening to _yourself?_" asks Gwen. Her knees are shaking and she's so bewildered and disappointed and exhausted that she's afraid she might laugh. "I bet you're glad this happened," she says accusatorily, knowing how crazy she sounds but completely unable to stop herself. Before Peter can interject, she elaborates, "I bet you're glad, this worked out so perfectly, hasn't it every time before? You and I, we take some major step in the right direction, I actually trick myself into thinking it's okay to get _close _to you again, and then you—"

"Jesus, Gwen," says Peter, "are you serious? You can't be—this is my worst nightmare, I never thought—if I ever thought for a _second_ that something like this would happen, I never would have—"

"Shown up at my apartment like some crazed, lovesick lunatic in the middle of the night?" Gwen finishes, throwing the words at him like a whip.

Peter looks visibly upset but he takes a breath, trying to be calm, trying to be rational, trying to be everything she cannot be right now and she almost hates him for it. "This isn't about that and you _know_ it," says Peter. "This is—your safety, your life, Gwen, this has nothing to do with that, this is so much bigger."

"Because last night wasn't a big deal," says Gwen caustically.

"Of _course_ it was," says Peter, sounding impatient, "Gwen—" He stops himself, shaking his head, as if he has thought the better of saying something. "You're upset. You're hurt, your forehead's bleeding, we should really just get out of here and get some rest and then we can talk about it when—"

"Oh, don't treat me like some kind of invalid, I'm perfectly capable of having this discussion _now_," says Gwen heatedly, although she is slowly becoming aware of the spectacle she is making of herself barefoot in the middle of a sidewalk to the few people who have walked by.

"There's nothing to discuss. You have to get out of here. If anything ever happened to you, I could never forgive myself—"

"Oh, just stop," says Gwen holding a hand to her head. She hisses, grazing the sticky gash, but it doesn't shake her resolve. "I know this act, Peter. You do this every time. You reel me in and we do something crazy and you're such a _masochist_ that you have to punish yourself by staying away from me, but what about me, Peter? Why don't you ever think about how _I_ feel, what _I _want?"

"I do," he says, sounding miserable but determined, "of course I do, Gwen. I feel the same things, I want the same things, but that doesn't change what just happened, what _could_ happen if we just sit here and let it. I've never wanted to hurt you," he says, the same way he has said it a thousand times, and even though she believes him, of course she believes him, she turns her back on him, she can't watch. "This isn't—you know this isn't some reaction to what happened last night. You have to understand that. If I'd had any idea that this freak would come after you, I never would have shown up at your apartment last night—I swear to god, I wasn't trying to reopen old wounds, or—"

"You're right," says Gwen, cutting him off. "Last night was a _mistake_."

Peter's face pales. "No, no. That's not what I said, could you just give me a chance to—"

"Forget it," says Gwen, blinking hard, because she doesn't want to start blubbering on the sidewalk on top of everything else. She's so embarrassed. She maybe has never hated herself more than this, not just for exposing herself and making herself so vulnerable to him last night after they both should have known better, but for using it to hurt him now.

She just can't think of any other way to make a clean break, any other way to make it any less humiliating than it already is. She tries to walk away, but of course he keeps up with her easily, falling into step with her without even trying.

"At least put some shoes on," he says, offering his sneakers to her again.

This time she knocks them straight out of his hands and they hit the cement with a thud. "Leave me alone."

"Gwen—"

"Just _go!_" she screams, loud enough that people are starting to turn around, even though she has figured out they must be as far as Harlem and she is sure nobody is too shocked to see a barefoot girl shrieking at a boy in the middle of the day. Peter is staring at her, looking nervous and hesitant so she decides to help him out by adding, "I swear to god, Peter. _Leave_."

He keeps walking next to her, keeping a few feet of distance between them, apparently undeterred by her attempts to shake him off through public embarrassment. Unsurprisingly, nobody watching bothers to come to her aid, either. She decides she can't yell at him again, that she'll just have to let him walk with her until they find a way home and even though she feels like her chest is about to cave in she will endure this. She has to.

Peter whistles and waves his arm out and Gwen looks at him as if he has completely lost his mind, but then she sees the taxi pull up to the curb. Peter opens the back door for her and rattles off her home address to the driver.

"Are you coming, too?" she asks, trying to sound like she doesn't care.

He stares at her meaningfully. "Only if you want me to."

Gwen can't look him in the eye. She levels herself with the taxi and slides inside, forces herself to look up, and says, "I don't."

* * *

At first she can't fathom why Peter would send a taxi to her family's apartment instead of hers, but she doesn't make any move to tell the driver to take her someplace else. She feels like her own apartment is haunted. The sheets are still tangled, her clothes are still hanging and wet from running home in the rain—there are too many reminders, and right now she doesn't want to think about Peter, or the grim acceptance on his face as the taxi drove away.

The driver stares at her curiously through the rearview mirror and Gwen knows she must look like a wreck. She touches a tentative hand to her head and feels that her bangs are sticky with dried blood, but the source of the bleeding is relatively small and she doubts it will need stitches. The skin of her legs is an unsightly collection of dirt and fresh bruises. She can't go home like this.

She can't go anywhere else, either.

She pays the driver with a credit card she had shoved into her pocket with the original intention of paying for breakfast that morning and heads up to her apartment building. The doorman stares at her and he might even say something, but Gwen just smiles at him briefly and ducks her head down and lets the elevator swallow her up before anyone else can try to ask questions.

It's so quiet as she shoots up those twenty floors. She wishes she could stay in here forever. Alone, warm, safe. Nobody to complicate things.

The elevator dings and the doors slide open and Gwen leaves it behind, numbly walking over to her front door. It's unlocked, so she walks in as quietly as she can, hoping she can maybe sneak into the bathroom and at least wash her face and change her clothes before facing anyone, but as soon as she walks into the apartment her eyes lock on her mother's and she knows she is completely out of luck.

At first Gwen freezes and so does her mother. She had almost forgotten that they were upset with each other, that they hadn't really even spoken since that afternoon she walked in on her with Captain Johnson. Now it all seems so unimportant and far from her mind.

"Gwendolyn," says her mother, sounding a little surprised, and then Gwen steps forward and her mother gets a better look at her and gasps. "What on earth happened to you?"

The sight of her mother rushing over to her makes her throat feel tight and her eyes sting and without meaning to she feels like a little kid, young and stupid and way in over her head. She can't think of an excuse, she doesn't want to, she just wants to stand here and cry and have someone tell her it will be okay.

But her mother looks terrified. Gwen can't possibly put the burden of any of this on her—she can't ever know the truth, can't know about Peter or the danger she has put herself in or the unresolved questions that keep her up all night. Gwen used to be able to tell her mother everything, she was never the type of girl to keep secrets from her parents, but this is the kind of secret that changes everything.

She wishes her father were alive. She clings to the idea that none of this would have happened if he were. He would eventually come to see how much Peter and Gwen cared for each other and change his mind. He would stop the police from shooting at Peter and maybe let Spiderman cooperate with them to actually change the face of crime in this city instead of giving it a constant advantage by going after the wrong person. He would be here for Gwen to talk to, because for those brief minutes that he was alive and he knew the truth about Peter, he was the only person in the world who would ever understand.

"Your forehead—are you alright? Come here, let me look at it," says her mother.

Gwen obediently levels her chin so that her mom can get a view of it. After a few seconds she says, "Go sit on the couch, I'll get the first aid kit."

Gwen sits on the couch. The apartment is uncharacteristically quiet and she wonders where her brothers are, wonders what time it is. She bites the inside of her lip in an effort not to cry and by the time her mother has retrieved the first aid kit and is rushing back toward her she thinks she might have herself under control.

Her mother stops short and looks her up and down—the grim, the bruises, the bare feet.

"Jesus, Gwen," she says, "what happened to you?"

"I—" She hasn't thought this far ahead, and why would she? She never thought something like this would happen. The words that come out of her are absurd. "I was skateboarding, and I fell," she says, imagining that Peter might laugh if he could hear her now.

Her mother looks at her in disbelief. "Skate … boarding?"

Gwen nods. She might as well commit to this. "In flip flops," she says, "Without a helmet."

Her mother's face looks pinched, like she doesn't quite understand, but she doesn't look at all suspicious—as far as she knows, Gwen has never lied to her before.

"Why were you skateboarding?" asks her mother, with a tone that is slightly stern but mostly relieved, as if she is glad it was something so minor and not her initial worst fear, which Gwen supposes would involve a mugging.

"It was, uh—Peter's skateboard, I was playing with it and I slipped and fell and my … flip flops broke," says Gwen, feeling more ridiculous than she has ever felt in her life.

"Peter? Peter Parker?" says her mother, finishing cleaning off the blood on Gwen's forehead with a worried sounding laugh. "What in the world was he doing letting you ride his skateboard like that, doesn't he know better?"

"I—uh—" It feels weird having to defend him for something that didn't happen when she is furious at him for something else that did. "He was taking pictures, he likes to take pictures, you know, and I was goofing off and just—fell."

For some reason the lying soothes her and she doesn't feel like she's going to cry now that she has something to distract herself.

Her mother shakes her head sadly. "I wish you were more careful. Look at you. You're all banged up."

Gwen has to fiddle with the couch cushion to keep herself from getting emotional again. She has missed her mother in these past few weeks and she didn't understand how much until just now.

"Why didn't he at least bring you home?" asks her mother, always a fan of chivalry.

"He tried to," says Gwen, burrowing deeper into the lie. "He wanted to. But he had work so I wouldn't let him."

It's an unsettling thing, defending him like this. It feels like a knee-jerk reaction, something that she can't help. Even now, when she is angrier and more frustrated than she has ever been, she doesn't want her mother to think badly of him. It shouldn't be important to her what her mother thinks of Peter, not unless she ever plans for her mother to see Peter again, and that would involve a level of relationship she will probably never reach with him—it's an empty lie, one that betrays the false hope she still can't stop holding for Peter.

"Well, I'm glad it wasn't any worse than this," says her mother. She clicks the first aid shit closed and says, "Why don't you go take a shower? We'll watch a movie or something. Your brothers are out with your uncle for the night."

Gwen nods. The idea of it is so comforting and familiar it feels like her heart might burst with relief.

"I'm sorry," she blurts. "About the thing with—with you and Johnson."

Her mother takes a breath. "I'm sorry, too. I wish you hadn't found out the way you did."

Gwen leaves to go take a shower and it's the last that they speak of the issue for the rest of the night. She stands under the water for a long time, trying to calm herself down, but it's difficult not to replay the day's events in her mind. Waking up next to Peter in some sun-soaked, movie-like fantasy, then waking up in that cold, cemented room. The look on his face the few times she kissed him this morning and the look on his face as he stood shaking outside the building and confessed to killing a man. The way she was almost certain that their captor's lips were curled into a smile when he said the words, _You're a pretty girl. I'd hate for that to change_.

She rubs soap on her face, rubs it too hard. She knows that she can't just wash everything down the drain but it doesn't stop her from trying. Eventually she shuts the water off and leaves the safe harbor of the fogged up bathroom behind; she sees her mother in the hallway and smiles. She won't talk to Peter again. She won't get involved anymore. She'll just live her life the way everybody already thinks she does, orderly and intelligent and fine. She sits on the couch with her mother and tucks her knees into her chest as the opening credits for the movie starts and lets herself believe she can go back to this imagined place where everything was perfect, lets herself believe that she can go on as if nothing happened, lets herself believe she can, once and for all, leave Peter Parker behind.

* * *

I'm officially the most awkward person on the planet. Among the examples this week are spilling hot tea in a crowded lecture hall, and taking what looked like a fun free thing from someone handing out fliers near our lawn that turned out to be a condom, but it's like, what do you do? Give them back their condom and draw MORE attention to yourself? Or just sit there, with a condom burning a hole in your pocket, making you irrationally feel like a complete and total slut? Well, I chose option B, and yes, it DID fall out of my pocket. Pulled a Zac Efron in class. Naturally I just kept walking like it happened all the time.

To top it all off, my one successful interaction this week with a guy I like went like this. Me: "Hey, how was your day?" Him: "Holy crap, what happened to your voice?!" Me: "Um ... nothing. That's, um. The way I talk."

I'm going to crawl under a rock.


	16. Chapter 16

**Reckless**

* * *

"You never came in yesterday," says Owen, looking at her out of the corner of his eye in a guarded manner.

She sits down next to him in the lab, something she normally wouldn't do, but she has shown up late enough in the day that there are journalists and unfamiliar scientists milling around the place and she doesn't want to sit quietly and make herself look open for questions that the more experienced researchers would be better off answering.

"Yeah, I was with my mom," says Gwen, because it's not completely a lie.

"Oh." His shoulders seem to relax a bit and he hazards a glance at her from his work. "Hey, what happened to your head?"

"Um," says Gwen. She forces a smile and it comes out as a nervous laugh. "Skateboarding accident."

Owen nods. "With, uh—with Peter, I guess? I mean, I know he has a skateboard and all."

"Yeah, I saw him yesterday," says Gwen noncommittally, finally realizing why Owen is acting so bizarre. She can't help but start to feel a little awkward herself, now that she knows that the boys were unwittingly discussing her on what seemed to be a semi-regular basis. It's always been a little strained around Owen, of course, because she has always known that he liked her, but now it feels exponentially more uncomfortable.

Owen doesn't say anything for a moment. "You guys got dinner or something?"

"Owen," she says, already exasperated by the situation.

"Sorry."

He looks so on edge and disappointed that she takes a breath and says, "No, we didn't get dinner."

Owen nods and they're quiet for awhile. Gwen pores through some documents on procedural changes in the lab now that they're finally allowing a select few people in the media tour the facility, then she reaches for files of all the new interns she is supposed to lead around OsCorp sometime in the next few weeks. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Owen staring at a manual with an absurd degree of concentration, and she notices he hasn't turned the page in about fifteen minutes.

After a half an hour or so, the lab clears and Owen and Gwen are finally left to their own devices.

"How are Bonnie and Clyde?" asks Gwen as casually as she can.

Owen's head snaps up. "They're fine," he says. At her expression he says, "Oh, wow. I forgot to tell you. Like, a week ago—they just went back to normal, it was the weirdest thing."

Gwen looks at him skeptically. She remembers all too vividly their grotesque, distorted features—there should be no coming back from that. "You mean they're acting normal again? They're just used to it?"

Owen shakes his head, looking relieved. "No, they look completely normal, too. I have no idea how it happened."

Gwen sits there for a moment, processing it. It's unbelievable. It sounds like a freak show. And god, she can't help that she really wants to be a part of it. She knows that there's no possible way she can do any kind of research on them here at OsCorp, not without getting caught and getting herself and Owen into immeasurable amounts of trouble, but she really wants to see for herself if she can begin to figure out what happened to them.

"Nothing all that weird has happened to them in at least three days," Owen adds. "I'm hoping I can just put them back, with all this media attention nobody has really noticed that they're gone yet."

"What about Bonnie's tumor?" asks Gwen, who hasn't really been listening. "Did anything happen to it?"

Owen taps on the lab manual, looking pensive. "I can't really tell. She hasn't had any major improvements, but I don't have any kind of equipment at home. I've kind of been keeping them in my closet."

An alarm goes off on Gwen's phone, indicating that it's time for her to leave and get to class. Owen already knows what it's for, but instead of turning back to his work and saying good-bye like he usually does, he stacks his papers and neatly puts them in a folder and moves to follow her out the door.

"I've got a meeting with a professor," he says by way of explanation. "You headed to the chem building?"

"Yeah," she says, feeling a little self-conscious that he knows her schedule so well.

"We'll walk together, then," he says, using a chipper, almost forced tone that she hasn't heard in the few years she has known him. It's all the confirmation she needs that he is starting to see her as a competition between him and Peter. What Owen doesn't understand is that there's no point in winning this competition when one of the players has given up at the starting line.

They walk briskly, and Gwen is careful to make sure the conversation remains in a neutral zone. Owen politely asks about MJ and Gwen is all too happy to update him on her latest adventures. He's chuckling at the end of a story about an audition with a dog for a pet food commercial gone terribly wrong when Gwen turns around.

"What?" asks Owen unevenly, still breathy from laughing.

Gwen blinks and looks around them. She isn't sure why she turned around, but now she has stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and people are starting to get annoyed with her for blocking the flow of pedestrians.

"Nothing," she says. She feels jumpier than usual, but after yesterday, who could blame her?

He accepts this and they keep walking. "What ever happened to the dog, anyway? Did they seriously still keep it cast in the commercial after it tried to eat her hair?"

"I never found out, the commercial apparently only aired in the Midwest, so—_ow!_"

Gwen feels pressure at the base of her ponytail and only then does she realize that someone is yanking it back; her first naïve thought is that maybe it's MJ with one of her overenthusiastic hellos again, but this is violent and mean and beyond her petite friend's abilities. She cocks her elbow back on reflex and hits someone just in time to get her balance, and gets a view of Owen's startled, wide-eyed face.

She whips around to see what he's staring at and her jaw drops, too. It's the man from yesterday. She can't even believe it—of all the nerve, in broad daylight, and isn't he _supposed to be dead?_

"Spiderman?" says Owen dumbly, not reacting.

The imposter moves forward again, reaching for her, and just darting a few feet out of his way unwittingly puts them into an alley. Still, they are in plain view. She wonders what on earth he could be trying to accomplish. He seems sluggish and stupid, nothing like the man who said cunning and terrible words that haunted her all of last night—something is wrong with him, and after a quick glance she sees the hole on the top of his mask and the rip in his side that are both still oozing with fresh blood, and she realizes that these are probably the injuries Peter assumed killed him the day before.

She can't even blame Peter for thinking it—with injuries like that he probably shouldn't even be alive, but she supposes if he has somehow adapted Peter's abilities, he must have his speedy healing, too. She doesn't want to know how bad it was yesterday if it's this bad now.

Owen crashes into the alley just as the imposter Spiderman advances on her, and Gwen almost feels badly about extending her foot out and kicking him.

"What's going—why would Spiderman—"

"He's a fake," says Gwen through grit teeth, because he's getting up again, "could you help me here, please?"

Owen nods. "Right," he says, and then, to Gwen's immeasurable frustration, he starts rooting around in his backpack.

"Jesus, Owen, what are you—_back off!_" she yells as the guy comes at her again, looking deranged and hopelessly in over his head. It reminds her of something out of a zombie movie. She balls up her fist and moves to punch him but he catches her hand in mid-air and he's still surprisingly strong. She feels him trying to crush the bones of her fist and yanks her arm back, stumbling a bit and shaking her hand out gingerly.

"Close your eyes," says Owen.

She takes her eyes off the man for a split second to look at Owen. "_What?_" she splutters, but then she sees the can of mace in his hands and clamps her eyes shut and holds her breath just in the nick of time.

The man starts howling immediately, doubling over and screaming in a language she recognizes as Russian. She knows he isn't breathing it in, not with whatever mechanism he has that allows him to navigate through his smoke bombs, but it must be aggravating his wounds unbearably.

She squints and darts forward. He will never be this vulnerable again.

"Gwen!"

She hears the surprise and edge of panic in Owen's voice, but it doesn't stop her. She reaches out, finds the seam where the mask and the suit meet, and rips it off.

The man splutters and moans, reeling to get out of her sight, but it's too late. Even thought her eyes are stinging from the dissipating cloud of mace, even though she hasn't seen this man in over two years, his face is unmistakable.

"Oh my god," she says, temporarily paralyzed.

He wriggles backward, away from her, like an animal shrinking from the light. In one swift movement he reaches again for a smoke bomb and sets it off—she wonders what the point is, since she doubts he's any better off than they are without the mask, but she is too astounded to ask questions. She flees the alley, almost running smack into a breathless, terrified Owen.

"Are you okay?" he asks, gasping through the smoke.

She nods curtly. There's a small crowd of people ogling them from the street, but she pushes past them, assuming that Owen will follow.

"C'mon," she says, "let's get out of here."

Owen balks at her, struggling to keep up. "Shouldn't we—shouldn't we call the cops or something?"

_What are the cops gonna do?_ she almost yaps. He'll be long gone by the time they arrive, injured or not. She straightens her shoulders and starts walking away purposefully and says, "No. We've had enough media attention since the last Spiderman incident, I can't do that to my family again."

To her relief, nobody tries to follow them. Owen spends the last five minutes of their walk spouting off about how insane that was, and asking again if she's okay, and speculating with all these bizarre theories that she doesn't pay any attention to. She says she'll call him later but promptly forgets as soon as he starts to leave. Once he is out of sight she turns on her heels and leaves the chemistry building, walking outside to collect herself before class.

She can't do this. She doesn't want the burden of the secret she just revealed. She finds a bench, a miraculously empty bench, and sits down on it for a long time, watching the traffic pass and wondering how on earth she is going to tell Peter that the man who is hunting him down and trying to kill him is none other than his father.

* * *

She runs past her apartment to grab a few things like textbooks and her sneakers and toiletries because as much as she hates to admit it, Peter is right about the two of them becoming targets, and her apartment is as good as marked. She considers calling him to tell him what happened, and knows that she should, but she can't stomach the idea of talking to him. It's already tense and awkward, and then what? She marches up and tells him his father has gone insane and is for some reason speaking in Russian?

After eating dinner with her family and helping Tyler with his calculus homework, she shuts the door to her room and pulls her hair out of its ponytail and kicks the drawer where she keeps some old sweats to sleep in. She is just grazing the seams to take off her shirt when she hears a rap at the window.

She whips around, only realizing about halfway through the motion that it could only be one person, and when she sees him in full uniform at the window she scowls at him.

He knocks again.

She smoothes down her shirt self-consciously. "What do you want?" she hisses, embarrassed and knowing he'll be able to hear her with his freakishly good senses.

He rips the mask off and she's surprised to see that he is scowling right back. "Let me in," he insists, which only serves to throw her off more. She doesn't know what exactly she was expecting, but she thought he might show up a little more repentant than this after their fight. She is the one who should be on the offensive here, not him.

She begrudgingly unlocks the window and turns her back as he pushes it open and slides into her room. "What?" she asks again. She can't look at him, not knowing what she knows. She's afraid that the second she does she'll just burst and tell him and make everything worse than it already is.

The sound of the window shutting is louder than she would have liked and she flinches, staring at the door.

"Why is it that I have to find out secondhand from _Owen Paisley_ that you were publicly attacked by that fake Spiderman?"

Gwen tenses. "You saw Owen today?"

"Sure did," says Peter, his voice closer now. He doesn't say anything for a moment, and Gwen realizes that he's waiting for her to explain. "_Well?_" he asks.

She turns so that half of her body is facing his. "I thought you'd be glad. Turns out he's not dead after all."

"No, Gwen, I'm not _glad_ that he turned out to be alive and came after you. I didn't mean to—I certainly didn't want to kill him, and if I'd had any idea if he was alive, I wouldn't have even let you stay in the city."

"_Let _me?" Gwen repeats, incredulous. She is so boiled up now that she has no problem looking him straight in the eye, but he's staring at the floor now, his hands balled into fists and looking frustrated and upset. "Let me, huh. Well _thanks_, Peter, I'm so glad you've granted me permission to live my life—"

"Do you not see what's happening here?" Peter interrupts her, his voice so elevated that they both freeze and stare over at her door for a moment. He continues, undeterred, "You don't understand, and don't get angry with me for saying it, because you _don't_. I've been dealing with this for the last few years. Once someone tries to hunt you down like this, they don't stop. Nowhere is safe. And you're just a girl, Gwen—I said _don't _get angry with me for saying this, you know I'm right."

Her cheeks are already flaming and she is pointing a finger at him uselessly, so much frustration brimming under the surface that it seems to be blocking any coherent words from coming out of her. He mistakenly takes this as permission to continue.

He takes a breath, his posture strung out and his features seeming to sink into his face with exasperation. "You can't—what happened today, you can't just not tell me, Gwen, you can't. I shouldn't be hearing it from Owen, I should be hearing it from you."

Gwen purses her lips. "Are you mad because I didn't tell you, or mad because I spent the day with Owen?"

As soon as she says it she regrets it. She is not this girl. This is beneath her—beneath MJ, even, the queen of boy drama. She fully knows that Owen has nothing to do with this, but she is angry and hurt and embarrassed for the other night and as long as they're angry with each other, she can put off dealing with it, and put off telling him the truth about his father.

Peter's eyes widen. He opens his mouth but doesn't seem to draw in air. Finally he says in a quiet voice, "All I want is for you to be safe."

He is only standing a few feet away from her but she feels the distance between them mounting with a terrifying speed, as if she has cut a chasm into the floor at her dresser, dividing the two of them. He stares at her. He is so desperate for her to understand, and she does, but she doesn't want to. She can't handle his eyes on hers so she averts her gaze to the floor. He turns, toward the window.

"Peter," she says uselessly.

He shakes his head. "I'll be more careful. I'll watch over you. It'll be okay."

The way he says it is so impersonal, like he owes her a debt and there is nothing else between the two of them. She knew she would strike a chord with the line about Owen, but she wasn't expecting this. He seems robotic and passive, like he is out of emotions to spare for her, and she can't really blame him for it when she has spent the last day pushing him to the edge.

"I shouldn't have said that," she says, her feet rooted to the ground.

She is hoping he will turn around. She is convinced that if he just looks at her and sees the sincerity in her expression that he will relax and be familiar and normal again, and for a moment she is certain he is turning to face her and then he takes the mask in his hand and jams it back over his head.

"Don't worry about it," he says, his voice muffled.

There are a hundred things she could say as the pries the window back open. She could tell him she understands, tell him he's right, tell him she's sorry. She could tell him she loves him. She could tell him, the same way she always does, to be careful.

Instead she watches him leave as if it is happening to someone else. The window closes with a snap and he disappears into the night, leaving nothing but a cold gust of wind and an empty, useless apology Gwen didn't have the nerve to say.

* * *

Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry. (Gwen won't say it but I will). I'm a terrible updater. We've been super busy with like four hours of rehearsal a night for this show, which is fun and all, except for some reason my character gets beaten up a lot and I've just discovered my hatred of stage combat, particularly when your character is the one that's always falling down (woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by a bus, and also there is a three inch gash on my boob I'm not even going to BEGIN to try and explain). It's Spring Awakening, though, so it's like. If you don't get the shit beaten out of you at some point, where's the fun.

So anyway. I'm going to try and keep the updates more frequent. I literally haven't been able to write for a week, though - apparently we're in school to learn or something? So I have to keep studying for these tests. Ridonk, I know.


	17. Chapter 17

**Reckless**

* * *

First thing the next morning Gwen calls the facility where Connors is locked up to request a visit. She stays on the line for a long ten minutes, drumming her fingers on her desk and listening to elevator music as they leave her on hold. She knows something must be the matter if they have kept her waiting this long, because the first time she had no trouble visiting at all.

She wonders if they are asking Connors' permission, but even if she does, she can't imagine a scenario where he says no to seeing her.

"Miss Stacy?"

Gwen has been waiting so long she starts a bit at the sound of a voice on the other end of the line. "Yes."

"I'm afraid Dr. Connors won't be able to see any visitors this week. Due to his recent illness, he has been quarantined."

"Quarantined?" Gwen repeats. "For what?"

"I'm sorry, miss, that information is confidential."

After she hangs up she stares at her blank computer screen for a long time, wondering what on earth would be so severe that Connors would require quarantining. She knows his illness was caused by the havoc the transformations had on his body, but she can't imagine that it could somehow relapse, not after the antidote essentially blanketed all of Manhattan. So if he isn't going to turn into a giant lizard, what sort of threat could his illness pose that he would possibly need quarantining?

A week passes. Gwen spends most of it catching up on her studying and staring over her shoulder—not in search of the man who attacked them, but of Peter, because she has this unshakeable feeling that he is always close by. She is almost afraid of the idea of it. He said he would protect her, that she shouldn't worry, but what does that mean? Is he really spending his spare time following her around?

Sometimes she's so certain that she has caught him that she'll creep up to the window and throw it open and peer outside, but he's never there. She'll stand there, feeling some measure of relief and another of panic—where is he, if he isn't here? She never runs into him on campus, and she won't go back to her apartment, so she hasn't seen him since he left her room that night.

She is dying to talk to him, to at least see him again. She wishes she could take back what she said but isn't the type to dwell on would haves and should haves, she just wants to find some way to make this right and move forward, but she can't with Peter hiding in the shadows like this.

The worst part is that she can hardly even look at Owen. It isn't his fault, of course it isn't his fault, but she's angry with him, too. If he hadn't been there that day, if he hadn't opened his big mouth and told Peter about it, if he hadn't existed in the first place to drive this unconscious wedge between Gwen and Peter that Gwen exploited at the first chance she got, they wouldn't be in this mess now.

One Thursday, a week or so after the last incident with the imposter Spiderman, Gwen is walking down MJ's hallway to meet her for lunch when she pauses. Something is going on in MJ's room, and the voices are so loud that she can hear them both clearly and distinctly from halfway down the hall.

"That's an awful thesis statement, are you trying to fail us _again?_" MJ is demanding of someone in a shrill voice.

"Sheesh, it was just an idea, I don't see _you_ coming up with anything brilliant."

It's Peter. Gwen stops completely this time, wondering if it's wrong to eavesdrop on them, but the door is wide open, so what could they possibly have to hide?

"That's because I actually like to think through my school work, I don't just slap something down on paper and call it a day—"

"I have other things to do, you know," says Peter crossly, in an impatient, blatantly irritated tone he has never used with Gwen. Gwen can't really explain why it makes her inexplicably jealous, as if he has never been comfortable enough with her to be this mean to her, but that's a ridiculous thought. She shouldn't want Peter to talk to her like this.

MJ snaps back like a whip. "What, you have to go run around the city with your artsy camera like some self-important hipster?"

"Hey," says Peter, "I don't rag on your stupid audition songs, which, by the way, if you play anything from the _Wicked_ soundtrack one more time, I swear to _god_—"

Gwen clears her throat, trying to hide the fact that she is cringing by only coming halfway into the room. She doesn't know why this conversation is making her so uncomfortable. They're angry. They dislike each other. There is clearly no threat of anything happening—it's just, Gwen has never even seen Peter talk to another girl before, now that she thinks about it, and the degree of familiarity between them is kind of unexpected. It's only been a week that they've been working together, as far as she knows.

Peter will barely look at her. MJ throws her arms up in exasperation, oblivious to the tension, exclaiming, "_Saved_ by the bell. Beat it, Parker."

He doesn't really react to MJ's barb this time, self-conscious now that Gwen is in the room. He mumbles something about meeting up with her over the weekend and she rolls her eyes and dismisses him with a wave. Gwen watches the interaction, feeling kind of dazed, and Peter walks out with the shortest, most fleeting glance he has ever spared her.

MJ's cheeks are flushed as she slams the door behind him. "I hate him," she tells Gwen vehemently, and for some reason this only makes Gwen feel even worse. It would be one matter if MJ liked Peter, or if she simply tolerated him, but hating him takes on a whole new level of implication. It means that MJ spends time thinking about him, expels energy and anger on him, something Gwen has never seen her friend bother to do with any other boy.

"Huh," says Gwen noncommittally.

"Sorry," says MJ, taking a breath, "I know you guys are friends, but _ugh_."

Gwen sets down her backpack. "I brought your DVD back," she says, rooting around in the pockets for it.

"And what's worse, is it turns out we're _neighbors,_" MJ continues.

Gwen hands her the DVD, afraid to ask her to elaborate, knowing that she will whether or not Gwen asks.

"In Queens. This whole time. I've lived right next to him for like, ten years." She sets the DVD back on a shelf full of romantic comedies and chick lit and says, "I mean, I thought a boy lived next door since I kept hearing crappy music coming out of one of the bedrooms, but I didn't know it was _him_."

"Yeah, well," says Gwen, desperate to change the subject but also morbidly curious about just how much MJ and Peter know about each other.

MJ waves her arms in a gesture of finality, though, and her scowl relaxes a bit, indicating that she is finished with her Peter Parker themed rant. She turns to Gwen. "I feel like I haven't seen you in forever."

"I've been home, mostly," says Gwen.

MJ winces. "And that thing with your mom … ?"

Gwen sits down on MJ's bed and starts to fiddle with one of her many stuffed animals. "I don't know," says Gwen, feeling a weird, gnawing guilt in her stomach. "I mean. We haven't talked about it, and he hasn't been around at all. My brother said that he did come for dinner once after that whole—er, blow up. And that they told the boys the whole situation with the two of them. I guess they're dating. That's weird."

"But he hasn't come over at all in the last few weeks?"

"No. I mean, I think my mom sees him, she works near his office," she says defensively, because she doesn't want to feel like the bad guy here.

MJ looks at her meaningfully, but doesn't say anything. It's rare that MJ ever takes the moral high ground on anything, and it makes Gwen feel a little bit rotten knowing that MJ is, to some degree, on her mother's side. But before she can begrudge MJ of this, she remembers MJ's own unpleasant parents and living situation and keeps her irritation to herself.

"How are you and Richard doing?" asks Gwen.

MJ purses her lips.

"Oh," says Gwen. "What happened?"

Her friend plops down next to her on the mattress and says, "Well. He decided … we should go on a break."

"What?" says Gwen, genuinely surprised. Richard doesn't seem the type to do that, at least he didn't in high school. And Gwen can't imagine any guy letting MJ get away.

"Long distance," says MJ, not quite making eye contact with her and fiddling at her sleeves. "I mean, it's bullshit, right. It's like. Just end it already, I don't know what this whole deal with a break is."

"But you didn't … end it?" Gwen elaborates.

"No. No, I didn't," says MJ, shrugging a little. There's a sort of edge to her voice, and it gives Gwen the impression that she is feeling a lot more upset about this than she is letting on. While MJ is in a career path where she gets rejected readily and often, Gwen doubts she has ever been rejected by a boy, especially not at this magnitude. She and Richard have dated since high school.

A selfish part of Gwen hates to hear about this, not because of her friend's unhappiness, but because of what she witnessed in the hallway a few minutes ago. A single MJ changes the whole dynamic of everything.

"I figure he'll come to his senses, right?" asks MJ, finally looking over at Gwen, her eyes expectant and needy, waiting for Gwen to agree.

"Yeah," says Gwen supportively. "Of course he will. I don't know what he's thinking."

They speculate about it a little longer, and MJ is appropriately hung up on the situation enough to convince Gwen that nothing is going on between her and Peter. Still, she can't stop the unwelcome gears in her mind twisting and turning and reimagining the two of them in her dorm room together, the raised voices and the pink cheeks and a passion that reminds Gwen all too well of her own. She tells herself she is being paranoid, that Peter loves her and only her and at the very least would never make a pass on her friend, but the thought of it keeps her up long into the night.

* * *

Another week passes. Gwen knows she can't put this off any longer; she needs to talk to him, he needs to know the truth about his father. As far as she knows, the imposter Spiderman hasn't surfaced in the time since she and Peter have talked, and it has served as a fine excuse shove the idea of it completely out of her mind, but it's not fair to Peter, no matter what their issues are.

So she calls him. Then she calls him again the next day, to leave a voicemail. She calls him a third time and when he still doesn't answer, she isn't sure what to do. Peter, of course, has no motivation to pick up the phone, because he knows nothing terrible has happened to her—she still has this eerie, inexplicable feeling that he's close by most of the time. But she has no other way of getting in touch with him now that he is so determined to evade her, not unless she wants to barge in on another study session and stalk him out of MJ's door like a crazy person.

The fourth time she calls him is the time he slips up. Her phone is pressed to her ear so at first she doesn't notice the rattling outside her window. The noise of it is faint but persistent, so finally she opens the window just a crack and sees a phone vibrating on her fire escape, and not so far away from it a sleeping Spiderman in the corner that's obscured from the street.

"Hey," she says instinctively.

Peter's entire body jerks, followed by an unflattering snuffling noise. She assumes he sees her through the mask because he straightens his posture and shifts just a few noticeable degrees away from her, as if she isn't going to notice him there, as if she hasn't already.

She's afraid for a moment that he might dart off into the night, but he remains there, not moving a muscle.

"You've been sleeping on my fire escape," says Gwen.

"No, I haven't," he says, faster than she would have expected.

They stare at each other for a moment. The way the mask obscures his face is maddening. She wants to ask him to take it off, but she doesn't want to ask him for anything. Instead she leans forward, just slightly, not looking away from him, and pushes the window open wide enough to slip out of it.

Peter doesn't move. She stands up and takes a few steps, hearing the roar of the city under her feet. She walks cautiously, carefully, as if she needs to keep her balance despite the supports of the railings and the wide space of the fire escape. She is aching to be closer to him but she is afraid of approaching too fast, afraid of coming off as aggressive and demanding after their last exchange, afraid that he'll use it as an excuse to leave.

She waits until she is directly in front of him and then crouches down to his level. The fire escape creaks under the shift in their weight, and she sucks in a preparatory breath, reaching forward, waiting for him to pull back.

He doesn't. She almost loses her nerve, but once her fingertips reach the seams of his mask and he still doesn't move, she takes it as permission and slips the mask off over his head.

His eyes snap up to face hers instantly. She expects familiarity, she expects warmth, but what she sees instead is wariness and anticipation.

She has waited for two weeks to fix this, and now that she's here, she doesn't know how.

He is the first to look away, staring down through the fire escape to the city below. She doesn't consciously raise her hand to touch his cheek and he doesn't seem to expect the gesture either, so when they look at each other again it's with some amount of surprise in both of their faces.

"I'm sorry," she breathes.

He gnaws at his lip and looks away from her again, and she drops her hand to her side, feeling dejected and inadequate. She is so desperate for his understanding, for his forgiveness, that she thinks she might say anything. She'll tell him he's right, that she'll leave Manhattan, that she'll never show her face anywhere near his alter ego again if that's what it takes for them to love each other.

"It's cold," she says after a moment, feeling like her voice is stuck in her throat. "Do you want to come inside?"

He shakes his head. "You should go in, though," he says, acknowledging her thin pajamas and bare feet.

"I wanted to talk to you."

"I told you, it's okay," says Peter, shifting himself again, leaning further from her. "I know you didn't mean it."

She did, though. Of course she meant it, not because she has any feelings for Owen, but because she was trying to hurt Peter, and it worked. She has always been at least somewhat consciously afraid that she has always been the one that loves too much, that she has been doomed to love him more than he will ever love her, but now that she sees the kind of pain that she can cause him—the kind she has forgotten since the days of Richard, all those years ago—she finally understands she was wrong all along.

"C'mon, Peter," she says.

He smiles at her a little sadly. "Go inside, Gwen."

"No."

He isn't surprised by her response. She doubts anything she says surprises him much anymore, because their conversations all seem to have this same pattern, this same push and pull that either ends in disaster or reconciliation. She wonders if they will defy their own set rules and end this conversation without either happening.

"You can't just stay out here like this," says Gwen. "I'm safe here. And it's the end of October. You're going to freeze."

"I'm not taking any chances," says Peter stubbornly, his attention back on the street. He takes in a breath and then lets out a long, slow sigh. "Please just go back inside."

Gwen almost just listens and leaves to prevent any more tension between them, but she came out here for a reason, one that is bigger than whatever issues they have between the two of them. "There's actually something I wanted to tell you," she says.

"Yeah?" he says, trying to sound indifferent.

"About that day the that guy attacked me and Owen," she says carefully.

"What about it?"

Gwen runs a hand through her bangs and steels herself for his reaction. She can't think about how hard this is for her, not when she is telling Peter something that will turn his entire world upside down.

"I got close enough to take off his mask, and I—well, I did."

She finally has Peter's full attention. He loses all pretense of distancing himself from her and the intensity of his full gaze on her is enough to make her stomach flip unpleasantly. She can't do this, she can't tell him with him staring at her so completely unprepared and unsuspecting of what he is about to hear.

Peter's voice is urgent. "What did you see?"

She is afraid her face might crumple. "Oh, Peter," she says. "I'm sorry. I'm—"

"What're you—"

"It was your father, Peter," says Gwen quickly, before Peter can interrupt her, before she can lose her nerve.

Every muscle in her body tenses waiting for his response, but he just stares at her dumbly, as if she has just spouted off something in another language.

"The man who has been running all over the city—"

"I heard you," says Peter weakly.

Gwen flounders for a moment, not sure what to do. If he would just react in some way then maybe she could figure out how to comfort him, but he just sits there, his expression unchanging. Tentatively she reaches a hand out to touch his, but he jerks his arm back.

"Peter," she says, letting her hand linger in the space where his just was.

He shakes his head. "You're wrong."

It takes her a moment to process what he has just said. She blinks. "Excuse me?"

Peter backs up from her, and then faster than she can blink, he's on his feet, staring at her still crouched below him. "You're wrong," he insists as she scrambles up to his level. His voice sounds mangled. "You—you haven't seen my dad in years, how would you even—"

"Peter, I know it was him," says Gwen. "Believe me. I wish it weren't."

His breathing is uneven and he clutches the railing, not facing her, still shaking his head. "I know my father. He would never do this to me. You're _wrong_."

She doesn't try to walk over to him, letting him have his space. "He's been missing for over a month, Peter. He's been missing ever since the fake Spiderman—"

"No," says Peter, too loudly for the fire escape. He's shaking, the muscles in his shoulders strung out and tensed. When he finally looks over at her she sees his face starting to crack, the muscles in his lips twitching and his eyes blinking in disbelief. She wants so badly to say something to lessen his pain, to be able to say that maybe she was wrong, maybe she didn't really see his face all that well through the smog, but she knows what she saw and lying to Peter won't make it any easier for him to face in the long run.

"I'm sorry," says Gwen again.

He swallows hard. "Go inside."

"Peter …"

"_Please_," says Peter, "please, just go inside."

She stands there for a few seconds, hesitating, watching him. He looks senseless. He looks dangerous. He looks completely beyond whatever help she can offer him.

When she turns around, she is half-expecting him to change his mind. She is half-expecting him to ask her to wait, or to sling a web on to her and reel her toward him in that quirky way he used to, because they're Peter and Gwen, and they need each other—who else in the world could understand each other's pain?

By the time she shuts the window he's out of sight, but just as she usually does, she has the distinct sense that he hasn't gone very far. She takes a few steps forward and lets herself sink into her mattress, shoving her face into her pillow as she feels the heat of the whole encounter flood her cheeks. She has never felt more useless or more uneasy with Peter before. It's deeper than the comment she made about Owen, deeper than the night they shared together, even. She wonders how she can fix something when she can't figure out what is broken; she wonders if it's worth fixing at all, if Peter can't meet her halfway.

But he is trying, in his own way. He may be cold, he may be distant, but it's her window he spends all night guarding, even when she tells him to leave. She has to believe that they can move past this, that someday they can live their lives together and not between a thick pane of glass.

* * *

Updating because FRANKENSTOORRRMM cancelled class. I mean, it's not really doing anything, but hey. I'll take it. I've had the kind of week where you wake up and realize you've bleached your teddy bear with your acne cream, the kind of week where the guy you like asks you multiple times if you're okay because you can't stop stammering every time you attempt human conversation ("Are you - how?" were words I said at one point - score!), the kind of week where you babysit an infant who is perfectly content with you singing any Top 40 song until you get to Taylor Swift and then bawls her eyes out like you've poked her with a hot poker rod. So I think I deserve to sit on my ass in my Christmas pajamas in an apartment that smells like pumpkin muffins and desperation, dammit.

Hope everyone else near the storm is being safe! But it's like, we all write and read fanfiction for fun, so when were we all going outside anyway.


	18. Chapter 18

**Reckless**

* * *

When Gwen walks into the kitchen the next morning, Captain Johnson is at the kitchen table in full uniform, and her mother is standing in a dress and full make-up, fretting by the sink. Gwen stares at the two of them blearily, her hair pulled up into a sloppy bun, thankful that she at least thought to put a bra on before wandering out at an hour she assumed she would be the only one awake.

"What's … are you here for breakfast?" asks Gwen, trying to sound mature and adult about this after her explosion the last time, but really, it's seven in the morning on a Friday and this is kind of uncalled for.

Captain Johnson shakes his head and opens his mouth to speak, but her mother interrupts him and says, "Gwendolyn, Michael—Captain Johnson—has a few questions for you."

Gwen frowns. "For me?" she says, looking over at Captain Johnson for confirmation.

He nods solemnly. "Why don't you sit down," he says, in a way that tells her it isn't really a choice.

She pulls out one of their kitchen chairs and sits down, feeling uncomfortable and unprepared in her pajamas. She looks between Captain Johnson, who is staring at her intensely, and her mother, who will barely look at her at all, and says, "What's going on?"

Captain Johnson clears his throat. "I need you to be honest here, Gwendolyn. Can you do that for me?"

He asks it like he would have back when she was a little girl, back when she followed him around blindly—back when he seemed like a cool, younger uncle who sometimes snuck her a Snickers bar and not like the cryptic man at her kitchen table who is shacking up with her mom.

Gwen doesn't say anything, thinking the question is rhetorical, but Captain Johnson lowers his head and says, "Gwendolyn?"

"What is this about?" asks Gwen, although she is almost certain it has something to do with Spiderman.

Captain Johnson's stare is relentless. "I have reason to believe you know the identity of the masked vigilante known as Spiderman."

For a moment she just stares at him. She wonders how she is supposed to react. How would a person who _didn't_ know the identity of Spiderman react? She isn't an actress, she isn't Mary Jane, she's no good at this.

So she laughs. Not on purpose, not as a strategic move, but because she is genuinely stricken and her body has run out of any alternative reactions.

"This isn't a joke," says Captain Johnson.

"I'm sorry," says Gwen, "it's just—no, I don't know who Spiderman is, why would you think I know that?"

Captain Johnson's eyes narrow. "The police have more information about Spiderman than the public is aware of," he tells her. "From observations of his vocal patterns and movements our forensics department has managed to narrow his age range from seventeen to twenty-two years. Your age."

"And out of all the twenty-year-olds in the city, you decided to come talk to me."

"Out of all the twenty-year-olds in the city who jumped a police barricade and risked gunfire to save Spiderman, yes, I've decided to come talk to you," says Captain Johnson, clearly not in the mood for suffering fools. "I've already paid your friend Owen Paisley a visit as well."

The hairs on the back of Gwen's neck prick uncomfortably. "Owen wouldn't know who he is, either," she says.

"Yes, that is what he claimed last night, and I believe him."

The implication of this statement is not lost on Gwen; he believes Owen, but he does not believe her.

She clears her throat and sits up straighter in her chair. "I'm afraid I can't help you. I know just as much as Owen does."

"Mr. Paisley tells me it was _you_ who started running toward the scene when the pair of you saw the broadcast on the news," Captain Johnson asserts.

Gwen feels a flash of irritation toward Owen. She kept her mouth shut about what he did to Bonnie and Clyde, but he spouts off at the mouth about her the first chance he gets. She knows she can't blame him, he has no true idea of what's at stake here, but this doesn't lessen her annoyance in the slightest.

She looks at Captain Johnson and says clearly, "Yes, that's true. It was my idea."

"And you'd have me believe that you have no idea of the true identity of Spiderman?"

She shakes her head. "I really don't."

"You're not familiar with him in any way at all?"

Gwen's lips straighten into a harsh line. "No," she says. "What do you want from me? I don't know anything."

Captain Johnson sighs, looking resigned, and this is the first time in the conversation Gwen starts to feel nervous. Wordlessly, Captain Johnson pulls out his cell phone and opens a file, tilting the screen so she can see. In it is a grainy video taken above the main hallway of her old high school, with the Lizard on the screen about to deliver a blow to Spiderman. Gwen braces herself, knowing what she'll see before the blonde head reaches the screen and she watches a seventeen-year-old version of herself whack the Lizard in the head with a chair.

"Gwendolyn," her mother gasps. "Is that you?"

Gwen grits her teeth. "Yes."

"What were you—"

Her mother is silenced by what happens next, when Spiderman, on the screen, pulls her into an unmistakably intimate pose—_I'm going to throw you out the window now_, she remembers—and lingers just a bit too long before throwing her out to safety.

Captain Johnson shuts the video off. The room is eerily quiet.

"Do you care to explain?" asks Captain Johnson.

Gwen's hands are shaking. She shoves them into her lap. "That was almost three years ago."

"I'm well aware," says Captain Johnson. "Care to explain?"

Gwen feels the heat on her forehead threatening to collect into beads of sweat. She glances at her mother, who looks both earnest and afraid, as if she is counting on Gwen to have a reasonable explanation and anticipating her own disappointment when she doesn't. Gwen doesn't want to let her down, but more importantly, she doesn't want to let Peter down, or herself. If she has to find a lie, she will lie with everything she's got.

Hoping it doesn't look as disingenuous as it feels, Gwen buries her head in her hands and makes a dramatic noise that was meant to sound like a sob, but comes out like more of a squawk.

"I'm so embarrassed," she says, mangling her voice, careful to keep her face buried in her hands because _yikes_, this is harder than she thought it would be, and maybe MJ was better off not getting cast as Ophelia in the beginning of the semester.

"Gwen?" asks her mother, her voice sounding a little doubtful. Of course Gwen won't fool her mother, who knows better than anyone else what Gwen really looks like when she's upset, but it's not her mother she has to sell this story to.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Captain Johnson shift uncomfortably in his seat. "I don't understand," he says, trying to keep his voice authoritative.

Gwen sucks in a breath and tries not to cringe. "I just—I just have the _biggest crush_ on Spiderman!" she exclaims.

Gwen can practically feel her mother's eyes rolling, but thankfully Captain Johnson's back is turned to her. Captain Johnson leans forward like he is going to say something, going to try and take control of the situation again, but Gwen won't let him, theatrically drawing in another breath and wailing, "He's just so—so _dreamy_ and dangerous and I just think—I think if he just met me, if maybe he got to _know _me, we could—"

"That's quite enough," says Captain Johnson abruptly, clambering back up to his feet.

Gwen continues to sob into the palms of her hands, wishing he would leave faster, because this whole fake crying business is exhausting, and she has never felt more mortified in her entire life.

Her mother and Captain Johnson shuffle out of the kitchen. She hears their voices in the hallway, until they're far enough away that she knows that they must be at the foyer, and she lets her sobbing subside long enough to hear the front door shut behind Captain Johnson.

The apartment is silent. Gwen removes her sweaty palms from her cheeks and pushes her messy hair back through her fingers, trying to smooth it out. She hears her mother walk into the kitchen from behind her and freezes, determined not to look at her, because she's a little too proud of herself and afraid she won't be able to suppress a grin.

Her mother leans against the stove and takes a deep breath. "Gwendolyn … " she says after a few moments, the word loaded with exasperation and the promise of a lecture that will go well into the next half an hour.

Gwen looks up at her sheepishly. Her mother's face is as red as she imagines her own is, and Gwen takes a rare moment to appreciate just how alike the two of them are, not just in looks but in everything else. The stubbornness, the determination, the way they care too much for people they maybe shouldn't. Gwen has always liked to think that she is her father's daughter through and through, but every once in awhile when she and her mother butt heads, their similarities are impossible to deny.

Her mother takes another breath and Gwen braces herself.

"French toast or pancakes?"

Gwen blinks at her. She waits a few seconds, wondering if this is some sort of angle, some sort of creative way to start the inevitable argument, but her mother is rooting around in a drawer and producing a spatula.

"Uh," says Gwen. "French toast?"

Her mother nods and looks at her for a beat longer than she normally would, biting her bottom lip. "Go get your brothers," she says. And that's the end of that.

* * *

Gwen heads off to class full of French toast and a feeling of dread that she can't seem to shake—this isn't over, whatever Captain Johnson wants from her. She knows that she may have bought herself some time by catching him off guard like that, but Captain Johnson's a smart, calculating man, and he'll be back for more, she's sure.

She feels her phone buzzing in the palm of her hand, a number she doesn't recognize. "Hello?"

"Gwen Stacy?" asks a woman's voice.

"Um, yes."

"If you're still interested in speaking with Doctor Connors, he is out of quarantine and alert. Once he found out you called here he requested a meeting with you."

"Oh," says Gwen, because after the chaos of this morning she had all but pushed Connors out of her mind. Her phone buzzes again, and it says incoming call from Peter Parker. "I, uh, yes. I'll be over there," she says in a rush. "Is this afternoon alright?"

"This afternoon should be fine."

"Great, thanks," says Gwen, immediately pulling the phone away from her ear to end the call and switch to the other line. "Hello?"

"Hey," says Peter, sounding rigid and awkward. "Uh."

Gwen is about to ask why on earth he's calling, but then she hears someone's high-pitched, incredibly loud voice in the background yelling profanities and the sound of what Gwen suspects is a stuffed animal thunking on a dorm wall.

"Are you with MJ?"

Peter clears his throat. "I just—we were supposed to be working, and she got this text, and she's all … She's really mad. And you're a girl, so."

"I'm a girl, so … ?" asks Gwen, not sure if she's annoyed or amused by this call for help. On the one hand, he's talking to her for once, freely and willingly and without any weird subtext dominating the conversation. And on the other hand, he's calling her about another girl.

"I don't know, I just—I'd leave, I mean, but she's—_jesus_, she knocked over a lamp—"

"I'm right around the corner," says Gwen. She hangs up the phone, sticking it neatly into her pocket. MJ has only ever thrown a tantrum like this once before, right after the departure of boyfriend number one in high school, so it's really no mystery to Gwen that Richard must have broken things off for good this time.

Gwen braces herself for the next few hours ahead, knowing it will involve plenty of Richard-bashing and chick flick movie watching and junk food consumption, all things Gwen ordinarily wouldn't mind if she had even an hour to spare. She wonders how she'll get out of there to see Connors, what she could possibly say to excuse herself that's more important than comforting her friend after the end of an almost three year relationship.

Before she can think about it any further, she sees a very angry, determined redhead bobbing down the street, heading toward her.

"MJ?"

Her friend's head jerks toward her, her lips in a tight line. "I _hate_ him!" she screams, not even bothering to close the distance between them first, causing people to look around in alarm. She stalks over to Gwen and says, "A text, Gwen, he broke up with me in a freaking _text!_"

Gwen winces. "I'm so sorry, MJ—"

MJ shakes her head. "Nope," she says, holding up a hand. "No, _he'll _be sorry, he will be, just you wait and see!"

"Where are you going?" asks Gwen, because MJ shows no signs of slowing down.

"The gym," says MJ, holding up her sneakers as she passes Gwen, and only then does Gwen look down and realize that MJ is still in slippers and pajama bottoms but looking as determined as ever. Gwen lets her go. She knows better than to try to reason with her friend when she's in this state, and she'll be ready whenever MJ wants to actually talk.

MJ is so short that she is swallowed up by the people on the sidewalk in no time. Gwen turns around and heads toward MJ's dorm, hoping that she'll catch Peter before he leaves, but as she reorients herself toward the building she nearly slams straight into him.

Peter dodges her awkwardly, his head ducked down. "Sorry, sorry—oh," says Peter, realizing it's her. "Hey."

Gwen tugs on the strap of her book bag. "Hey yourself," she says.

The two of them stand there for a moment, clogging up traffic on the busy sidewalk. Peter clears his throat. "Mary Jane is pretty mad."

"Yeah," says Gwen, raising her eyebrows, wondering why Peter is using her full name.

"I, uh, told her you were coming, but I guess she didn't hear me."

Gwen purses her lips. She doesn't want to talk about MJ with Peter, but right now it feels like they have nothing else to talk about, nothing that can be discussed on a city street full of people. "Do you have a minute?" she asks, not even sure what she wants from him.

He exhales loudly, considering the question. "Yeah, sure."

She walks over to a less crowded area and he follows her, until they find a place to stand where they're not right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the fringes of Empire State's campus. He's fiddling with his phone, reluctant to look at her. She thinks about last night, how furious he seemed, and is surprised that he seems so composed and willing to talk to her now.

"Look," she says, hoping it will prompt him to put the phone down. It doesn't. She waits a few more moments, until she has his attention, and then he takes a little longer than necessary to put the phone back into his pocket. She purses her lips. "I know you're still mad at me about the Owen thing, but—"

"I'm not," says Peter. "I'm really not. I mean, I was, but I'm not anymore."

Gwen shakes her head. "Then why are you …" She's not really sure how to describe what he's doing now, not without sounding like a crazy person. If she calls him out on being distant, on avoiding her, then he will say a dozen things to convince her that she's wrong—tell her he's been busy, that she has misinterpreted things, that everything's fine and she is just overreacting. Or maybe he won't, but she doesn't want to take that risk, so she just lets the words hang there and hopes he'll acknowledge that he knows what she means.

"I think—I think you need some time to figure out what you want," says Peter, his voice barely above a mumble.

Gwen frowns. "What is that—what do you mean?"

"It's just—" Peter looks really uncomfortable, fiddling with the drawstrings of his sweatshirt and still not quite making eye contact. "What happened that night, I thought—well. I think you thought that I just showed up, just on a whim, but Gwen, I didn't. I've been—I was thinking about it for a long time. Like, a _long_ time," he says, trying to smile a little bit to break the tension.

Gwen feels herself starting to blush, even though the moment is all wrong for it. For some reason these words feel like a relief to her, like a breath she has been holding for a long time without realizing it. To some degree she has been waiting to hear them ever since that night, waiting to hear some confirmation that he has pined for her over these past few years the way that she pined for him, that she hasn't wasted all this energy loving him and wishing for him and hating him for staying away.

Peter isn't finished, though, and she knows it, so she doesn't say anything.

"I know that—the next day was unexpected. And I'm still working on that. By the way. But that's not what I'm trying to say here." He swallows, and takes another second to choose his words. "It's just that—as soon as it happened—it's like it changed everything for you, like you really regretted what we did, and I just thought—"

"I didn't," says Gwen vehemently. "Of course I didn't. I just was so freaked out and afraid you were going to use it an excuse to _leave_ again."

"I wasn't," says Peter. The words are quiet but firm. He finally looks at her, his eyes tentative, as if he is afraid he's saying too much. "You just—really didn't even give me a chance."

Gwen feels overwhelmed. There are horns honking and boots clacking and people breathing and everything is just so loud except for this tiny bubble around them, where she is staring up at him in disbelief, not able to follow, not able to understand.

"What about …" She shakes her head. She speaks slowly, carefully, aiming her words at the sidewalk. "The promise, Peter. What about the promise."

His fists are at his sides and his chin is set and everything about him looks tense. "I can't." Peter puts a hand to his forehead, kneading his eyebrows, wracked with the kind of guilt she is only just in these past few weeks trying to understand. "I don't know about you, but—I can't. I want to keep you safe, I want that more than anything, but it feels like we've been living like we're already dead."

Gwen literally feels weak at the knees. The idea of this—of a life free of the promise that has overshadowed their lives like a dark cloud for so long—it is everything she has craved, everything she has longed for and dreamed of and _wanted_ since before she can even remember.

"I know," she says, the words coming out in a gasp. "I _know_." She feels it in the way her heart beats at the sound of his name, the way her stomach soars out of her throat at the sight of him, the way the world seems unbearably and amazingly bright and present and real when he so much as grazes her hand—it's like coming alive again, and she knows when he's gone there is no place and no person on this earth who can do the same to her.

"Gwen," says Peter, his arms extended like he might reach for her, then halting, as if something is holding him back.

She takes a step closer, making it easier on him like she always does. "Do you mean it?"

"Mean what?" he asks, his eyes dangerously close to hers, swimming in her line of vision.

Gwen breathes in. "Do you really think after all this time, after everything that's happened, you can really just let that promise go?"

Peter's chest seems to sink. "I wish ... " he says, letting the words hang there until neither of them are breathing. He shakes his head, just once. "Yes. I mean it." He's looking at her again now, his expression raw and honest and a little frightened. "I wanted so badly to keep it, to do right by you, by your father. But I can't stop—the way I think of you, all the time, every hour, every minute, and the last two years—were _awful_—"

"The worst," Gwen agrees, the words coming out as a choked laugh, because she's so relieved, so delirious, that she think she might just start to cry.

Peter shakes his head, as if he is finishing a conversation with himself and then turning to her to let her in. "Staying away from you is the hardest thing I've ever done," he says, "and I just—I'm not strong enough to do it anymore. It's you, it's always you, no matter where I go or what I'm doing, I just can't stop _feeling_ the way I—the way I feel." His eyes are desperate and beautiful and perfect. "Do you think … do you think we could ever be like that again? The way we were before all of this happened?"

Gwen is leaning forward so close to him that she just about loses her footing, but she recovers quickly, grabbing his sweater for balance and lifting her face up to kiss him in one swift, seamless movement. The kiss is deep but brief, his question still lingering, waiting for her answer.

She lowers herself from her tiptoes, letting her heels touch the ground. "No," she says. "I don 't think we can ever be like that again." She sees Peter's expression start to shift, but before he can react, she pulls one of his hands, tugs his body back towards hers. "Let's just be … us. Let's not try to go back or get somewhere," she clarifies. "Let's just be us."

Peter's lips crack into a smile. "Yeah," he says. "Okay." He kisses her, a sweet little peck, and when he pulls away he's wearing a broad, goofy grin. "Just us, then."

And as they stand there on the sidewalk, all knees and elbows and jumping hearts, kissing as if they're the only two people in Manhattan, everything else disappears. The uncertainty, the suffering, the unresolved questions that should still be ringing in their ears—it doesn't matter, _just us_—he's the only thing in the world she needs.

* * *

Guys. I have one month left of college. Naturally I'm shattering any notions of my coolness or popularity by throwing a Spiderman-themed party the day the DVD gets released (FRIDAY!) and inviting a bunch of people who might have thought I was normal, but too late. I'm so excited. I'm going to cover the coffee table I got out of the dumpster with Spiderman wrapping paper, and I've got Spiderman plates and cups, plus Spiderman sheets to lay out on the floor in case anyone gets too drunk to go home. SO PREPARED. SO EXCITED. Wish I could invite all of you, but alas, we are on fanfiction, the awesome realm where we are all super awesome, but at the same time we don't exist.

Our show is getting better. The guy I like accidentally ran into me today and for the first time ever it wasn't my fault. I am full of cheese and cupcakes. LIFE IS GOOD.


	19. Chapter 19

**Reckless**

* * *

Eventually Gwen and Peter pry themselves off of each other's faces and get on with the day. Peter gives her some ominous, unenlightening account of what he'll be up to trying to find the imposter Spiderman, and Gwen tells him she's going to class even though she's going to see Connors, but the most important thing they're not saying to each other is anything about Peter's father. Still, they leave each other smiling, and it's a lot more than she could have hoped to ask for yesterday.

By the time she finishes her work at OsCorp and her chemistry lab, it's nearly three o'clock. She walks to the facility where Connors is being held as if she isn't really walking there. Everything feels a little bit like a movie, a little bit like it's too good to be true, and there's a tiny voice in the back of her head reminding her that it is. That they may have made this reckless, impossible decision to leave the promise behind, but they are far from the worst they will have to face; there are still a thousand loose ends to be solved and there is no doubt in Gwen's mind that they will tangle and bring this brief euphoria to a stammering halt.

But she is happy. Right now, she is happy. So Gwen's mouth splits into a smile on the sidewalk, in full, broad view of complete strangers, tilting her head up to soak in the last of the October sun.

She arrives at the steps of the facility faster than she thought she would. Everything has seemed to move so much faster since this morning, which seems to be the fatal flaw of happiness, that once she has it, it slips through her fingers faster than sand. But she can't afford her own happiness here, knowing that it will make her stupid. She steels herself before she enters, trying to keep the thoughts of Peter and her own beating heart at bay, with minimal success.

"Miss Stacy," says one of the women in the front lobby, recognizing her as she walks through the door. She stands and motions for Gwen to follow her. "Doctor Connors just woke up, he can probably see you now."

Gwen wordlessly follows the woman down the hallway. She wants to ask what's wrong, wants to ask about the quarantine and why it took so long for her to be able to see Connors in the first place, but she doesn't.

The walk to his room seems longer this time. She maneuvers around several long hallways that seem to get narrower the further they go along, until finally they reach a door with no windows. The woman enters a pass code, waits for the mechanism by the door to sound its permission, and swings the door open for Gwen.

The room is much bigger than the last one she saw Connors in, and full of medical equipment. The focal point of the room is a bed and around it are machines connected to him, whirring and beeping and flashing measurements on screens. Gwen doesn't quite look at him even though she knows he's in the bed—she doesn't want to look at him until this woman leaves, if she ever leaves at all. Gwen looks up at her hesitantly, wondering how long she'll stick around, but she has already turned to go.

"You have ten minutes," she tells Gwen, with a forced expression on her face that Gwen doesn't quite understand.

The door shuts behind her.

"Gwen Stacy."

The voice is raspy and unfamiliar. Gwen is staring at her shoes, trying to compose her own expression, trying not to remember that this man killed her father and that the last words she said to him on her way out were hateful and cruel. She takes a breath and prepares herself for whatever she is about to see, but as she looks up she sees that taking a breath isn't near enough.

Connors is near emaciated, his skin sallow and looking as thin and fragile as paper. The mottled marks she saw on his hands last time have now spread, making what she can see of his body look like a giant, all-encompassing bruise. She can't help the gasp that escapes her—she has never seen a human look this terrible, and she can't even imagine how his heart is still beating when he already looks like a corpse.

"Repulsive, isn't it?" he says, in what she supposes was intended to be a light tone.

She can't quite find any words to say. He watches her struggle and smiles grimly, his breathing uneven and strained.

She didn't come here for this, but she has to know. "What happened to you?" she asks. She can't believe this was just from the side effects of becoming the Lizard, she can't believe that it would progress this quickly and horribly. A month ago he was sick, but he was walking around, he was talking, he was just as smug and self-righteous as always.

He struggles to get the air in his lungs to answer her. "I told you," he croaks. "I'm dying."

Gwen shakes her head, staring back at the floor because honestly, it's hard to look at him. More than ever she regrets the last words she said to him, how she wished he would suffer, because nobody deserves whatever is happening to him.

"Why are you here?" asks Connors.

She doesn't answer him. She means to, she will, but she came in here all steeled and ready for a fight to find a man without any fight left in him. Connors waits for her for what seems like a solid minute, and she listens to his ragged, awful breathing and the beeping monitors and tries not to cringe.

"I've told you everything I know," he says.

Gwen shakes her head. "No," she says. "You didn't."

He doesn't waste his words asking her to elaborate. She forces herself to look him in the eyes, in his sunken, purple-rimmed eyes, and says, "You didn't tell me that the man who was coming to see you was Richard Parker."

Connors doesn't react the way she thought he might. Instead he only seems to look at her curiously, or at least that's what she thinks he is trying to convey. It's hard to tell with the bones of his cheeks protruding like they're trying to start a fight with the skin on his face.

"Richard Parker is dead," says Connors evenly.

Gwen scowls at him. "Don't," she says. "Just—don't. You know he's alive every bit as well as I do. I ripped the mask off that fake Spiderman, the one who broken into OsCorp, don't even—don't try to lie to me, I know what I saw and it's way too late."

Connors closes his eyes and it makes her want to scream. She doesn't want him to have the mercy of getting to abandon this conversation, of getting to leave her without the answers she needs all over again. She's about to snap at him, but he opens his mouth purposefully and takes another second before saying, "I wish you were right. If he were alive," he says, wheezing, "I'd have one last man's death off my conscience."

Gwen stares at him uncomprehendingly. She doesn't know what happened fourteen years ago when Peter's parents disappeared and really, right now it's pretty low on her list of concerns, not while Peter's father is very much alive and trying to kill them.

She squares her shoulders and resists the urge to fidget. "Why won't you just tell me?" she asks, keeping her voice low and quiet. "You're right. You're dying. I can see that. So why won't you just tell me the truth?"

The question hangs in the air for a moment, before it's swallowed up by the whirr of all the machines. Connors briefly shakes his head and it's unsettling how the skin of his neck seems to stretch unwillingly with even the slightest movement. "Gwen, you're an intelligent girl."

She's about to roll her eyes, to turn her heel and leave, because she doesn't want this dying man's praise, doesn't want him to think that he can absolve the horrible wrong that he did to her by treating her well, but then she looks at him and realizes it's not about that at all.

"If Richard Parker really were alive, if he really were to try and get into OsCorp and take that solution—why on earth would he need me?"

Gwen stands there as the realization settles on her. For a moment she forgets to breathe. What exactly is she dealing with, if Connors is right? And of course he's right, Richard Parker would never need a pass code to get into OsCorp, he could just barge right in. The only reason she could think was that maybe he was trying to throw them off the trail, make them think it wasn't him in the first place—but why would he go to all that trouble? And why else would Connors really and truly seem to believe that Richard Parker is still dead?

"I saw him," Gwen says dumbly, because it is all she knows, it is the only shred of evidence she has. She took off that mask and there was no mistaking the man underneath it. They spent too many hours yelling at each other from the interface of a computer or the back seat of a car for her not to remember his face, and the eyes that can't help but look just like Peter's no matter how he tries to hide them.

Connors only shakes his head again.

"You have to help me," says Gwen vehemently. "You said you wanted me safe, right?"

This has gotten his attention. His eyes snap up to meet hers and she continues, "He knows I'm connected to Spiderman. He's after me, and Peter can only protect me for so long. I need this man gone. I need him gone so I can live my life again without staring over my shoulder, wondering if he's out there, wondering if I'll ever be safe in this city again."

His expression is remorseful. He purses his lips together and looks so genuinely upset at this notion that she has to stare down at her feet because she cannot let any pity for him into her heart, not without betraying her father.

"I'm so sorry, Gwen."

"Don't," she says under her breath, unable to help the disappointment that suddenly seems to be washing over her like a tidal wave. She didn't want to admit to herself that Connors was some form of a last hope, some way to make sense of her disorderly world and maybe be able to really help Peter for once, to do something he can't.

"I want you to see something."

She doesn't know why she even bothers to look up. He is pulling his good arm out from under the blanket and spreading the fingers of his hand out expectantly, as if he is waiting for her. She stares at his brittle fingernails and withered skin until he says, "Take my hand."

Her answer is immediate: "No."

He shakes his head, looking weary. "Just … trust me. One last time."

Gwen stares at him incredulously, stares at his eyes that now seem to big for the rest of his body and the few hairs left on his head and just takes in the complete and utter helplessness of him. She shouldn't trust him and she doesn't, but her ten minutes are almost up, and she knows Connors isn't exactly one for affection. If he's asking for her hand, he probably has a good reason.

She takes a step forward and extends out her palm, and only then does she realize how much she is scared to touch him. He represents everything terrible in her mind; he took her father, he took years of her happiness, he even tried to take Peter. It's like flirting with the devil. It's like daring fate to let him ruin her again.

But she takes his hand and nothing happens. She looks at his face, trying to understand, ready to pull her hands away, and that's when she feels it—his skin against her palm shifts and feels like liquid in her hands. She looks down, trying to make sense of the sensation.

His hand is no longer his hand.

"What?" is all she can manage, because she's seen this before—she's seen it on Bonnie and Clyde in their cages, but she has never seen it like this. The skin of his hands seems to bubble as it takes another shape, takes another form—it is pale and smooth and small and _delicate_ and it doesn't make any sense, she's about to pull her hand away, but something about the transformation makes her stop cold.

The hand she is holding is identical to hers.

"If you stayed there for a few minutes, I could completely transform," he says lightly, in a maddeningly conversational way that only a scientist with his morbid, uncensored curiosity could muster. He is staring at their hands, as the white paleness spreads up to his forearms, up to his elbows. "I could turn myself into you, just by holding your hand and thinking."

She yanks her hand away. "What the hell is this," she demands, suddenly shaking uncontrollably, transfixed on his mismatched arm that belongs to her.

"The man who came in here. Who took the solution out of your lab." Connors flexes his hand—her hand?—and the Gwen-like qualities of it seem to disappear as he concentrates on it. "He is apparently a man of his word. He gave it to me a few weeks ago, and its true intentions seem to have drastically backfired."

He says this but still sounds somewhat proud and unabashedly fascinated by the whole concept. Gwen can't even breathe. She's still gaping, open-mouthed, certain that she has been drugged and she is dreaming all of this up.

"You can—you can—"

"Change my appearance at will, yes."

Gwen takes in a shuddering, disbelieving gasp of air, backing away even further from the bed, watching as his arm practically melts back into its former state. It's disgusting. It's unfathomable. She can't look away because she is riveted, but she has to because she thinks she might throw up.

"It didn't correct any of the damage, though," he says regretfully. "I was already on a crash course. My death is inevitable, and it will come soon."

"Can the man who took the solution—the man who broke into Oscorp—" Gwen stammers, feeling panic well and blood rushing into her cheeks. "Can he do this too?"

Connors looks at her solemnly. "Gwen, I'm afraid that with a body whose organs aren't failing him, he can do much worse than this."

The realization is more jarring than a car crash. Gwen has to reach out and touch a wall to steady herself, because it's insane, it's impossible, but it suddenly makes perfect sense. Peter's father has been missing just as long as the imposter Spiderman has been on the loose. _Peter's father has been missing just as long as the imposter Spiderman has been on the loose._

"Oh, God," she mutters under her breath.

It isn't Peter's father doing this, which is the only small relief that she can hold on to, because the reality of it is so much worse—somebody is pretending to be Peter's father. Somebody has taken on his characteristics, has literally morphed their entire body to imitate him and take to the streets, and if the real Richard Parker hasn't shown up to help them in the last few weeks it can only mean that he's dead.

"How do I fix this?" she says to herself, pacing, fidgeting, pushing back her hair with her fist and doing all the things she promised herself she wouldn't do in here. She looks directly at Connors, and in a moment of desperation she says, "You did this. Tell me what to do, tell me how to fix this."

Connors shakes his head. "_You_ did this. The lab you work in. Only without any physical trials, you haven't realized it yet."

There are physical trials, is what Connors doesn't know. Tiny little physical trials scampering around in a cage in Owen's apartment. She hadn't realized that their shapelessness could mean anything, that it could serve some unique and gruesome alternate purpose.

She hears the doorknob twist open and reels around. The woman from before is standing in the doorway, staring at Gwen.

"It's been ten minutes."

Gwen blinks at her. "I …"

"It's alright," says Connors, sounding resigned. "You can come back tomorrow."

She can't think of a single question she can ask him that will help them now, but the comfort of knowing she can come back is all that she has. She nods at him. She tries to think of something to say, but falls short. She doesn't want to leave like last time, full of hatred and malice. She wants to leave as Gwen. Composed, fair, and calm.

"Goodbye," Connors bids her.

She lets her eyes linger on his for a moment, but doesn't say a word. She follows the woman out the door, through the maze of stairs and hallways and out into the lobby, her head still spinning as if she is in a dream, looking at the back of the woman she is trailing behind and wondering, _Do you know what I know? Did you see what I just saw?_

Only after she emerges out of the facility does her phone buzz and alert her to the two missed calls from Peter. She pushes the thoughts of what just happened out of her mind, desperate to talk to him, to tell him what's going on.

He doesn't bother with a hello. "Gwen, you were right."

His voice is disjointed and choppy. "Where are you?" she asks, already sticking her foot out in the street in case she needs to hail a taxi.

"You were _right_," he says again, and then she hears that he's out of breath and knows something must have happened. "The man under the mask, it is my father."

"Peter, where are you?" she asks again, more deliberately this time.

"I'm fine," he says, "they didn't get me, I'm in street clothes."

This isn't making Gwen feel any better. "What just happened?"

"Where are you?"

"Campus," Gwen lies.

"What part?"

She bites on her lip and shoves her hand out for a taxi. She's only a few blocks away from school. "The, uh. East Library," she says.

"Is it crowded?"

"It's—what's going on?"

"Just stay there, alright?" he asks. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be there in an hour."

She relaxes somewhat, knowing she won't be caught in the compulsive lie because it won't take nearly that long to get herself there. She'll explain everything when he gets there, but in the meantime, he needs to know.

"Peter, listen. It's not your dad. I have to tell you something."

She doesn't get an answer. She pulls the phone away from her face and stares at it. The call is still connected but she can't hear anything anymore, not even his breathing. "Peter?"

The line goes dead. Gwen walks purposefully, knowing it should only take her fifteen minutes to get there, wishing she hadn't lied in the first place. It's not as if she was going to lie to him about going to Connors—of course she has to tell him now. She wonders where he is, what could have possibly happened, why he was in his street clothes and why he can't meet her for another hour.

She's halfway to campus when she sees him—walking down the street, his posture unusually straight, his hair looking almost tidy. She opens her mouth to call out to him, but someone beats her to it—MJ is across the street, calling out to him, bounding across to meet him. She stands there for a second, wondering a lot of things: why he isn't stopping for her, why his shoes are tied so well, why he isn't covered in blood and bruises the way she suspected he might be.

MJ takes his hand and Gwen's heart lurches. She can't stop following them, not now. Peter looks stiff from behind but he doesn't take his hand away. She's too surprised to even let it hit her yet, it's a kind of processing deeper than just denial, it feels like she is walking in a dream.

Why is he letting Mary Jane Watson hold his hand?

Her phone buzzes. She almost doesn't pay it any attention, riveted, watching the pair walk away. MJ is so short next to him. Her footsteps are small and she has to take two for every step he takes. It's a sweet picture, with her swinging her red bag with her free hand and him nodding as she says something.

She tears her eyes away to look at her phone. It's an incoming call from Peter.

"… Hello?" she asks skeptically.

"You're not in the library," he says lowly.

Gwen stops on the sidewalk. "Neither are you."

"What? What are you talking about? Where are you?"

Gwen is about to yell at him, to say he ought to know exactly where she is, that all he has to do is turn around, but when she rounds the corner she sees that Peter is still holding MJ's hand, with no cell phone in sight. She exhales all of her anger, trying to make sense of this, trying to understand. It's Peter. She knows his face, she knows his hands, she _knows_ him. If it isn't Peter, who else could it be?

And then it hits her.

"Oh, _shit_."

"Are you alright?" Peter demands.

Gwen shakes her head. He can't see it, of course he can't—she opens her mouth and snaps herself back to the conversation and says, "I'm outside the drama building. You need to get here _now_."

* * *

Okay. In the interest of full discretion, I'm posting this drunk. The chapter was soberly written weeks ago, but I, however, am a mess of an excuse of a human being. Turns out that guy does NOT like me at all. I'm confused about why he showed up to my SPIDER MAN THEMED PARTY that he WASN'T INVITED TO to express these notions, but hey, at least I'm not gonna sit here and be all nostalgic about leaving college a semester early now. Screw it. Except for the part where I have to see him every freaking day for the next month with excruciating proximity, but whatever, it's cool, I'll just play dead whenever he walks by.

On a lighter note, this gives me a lot more time to panic about the midterms I didn't study for, and to maybe write more for this story and update in a timely manner.

In the meantime, I am forever single, and fondly, yours.


	20. Chapter 20

**Reckless**

* * *

"I'm on my way," says Peter, "but Gwen—what's going on?"

"What are you wearing?"

"Excuse me?"

"Peter, I'm serious," Gwen says into the phone, careful not to raise her voice in case MJ recognizes it and turns around. She keeps a safe distance from them. They've stopped in the front of the drama building and are standing there. MJ is talking and Peter, or whoever the hell he is, is listening to her wordlessly, occasionally nodding his head and looking down the street.

Gwen ducks behind a streetlamp.

"Um—a blue shirt? And pants?" he says.

The Peter Gwen is looking at is dressed in green. To her alarm it's a shirt she recognizes. Was this guy in Peter's apartment? Why the hell is he talking to MJ? "I didn't want to have to explain this over the phone, but I'm going to have to. Are you listening?"

"I'm running."

"Do both," she says.

"Gwen—"

"_Listen_. You're going to run down here, and you're going to see a guy who looks just like you, _literally_ just like you, because the guy we've been dealing with—Peter, he's not your father."

"He is, I just saw him, what are you—"

"He has some kind of … transformative abilities," Gwen cuts him off, which is a difficult task since she's trying to keep her voice low. She watches MJ look down the street as if she's searching for something, and then drop Peter's hand unceremoniously. She doesn't wonder about it long, though, because she's more concerned for MJ's safety now than anything. "This guy, he can change his appearance at will, and it looks like he can physically take on the abilities of the people he comes into contact with. When you saw him just now, did you have any prolonged exposure with him?"

"Yeah, I mean—I was in my street clothes, there were cops everywhere, I couldn't fight him back," he says, somewhat defensive sounding. "What are you trying to say?"

Gwen takes a breath. This really shouldn't be happening over the phone, but what choice does she have?

"I'm saying he knows you're Spiderman, and now that he's had a good enough glimpse and long enough contact, he has transformed himself … to look exactly like you."

That's when she hears the footsteps crash to a halt behind her. She whips around and sees Peter, breathless and confused and sporting a black eye.

"What the heck are you talking about?" he asks Gwen, grabbing her by the shoulders, looking her up and down as if to make sure she's still in tact. He breathes some sort of sigh of relief and releases her, but the question in his eyes is still demanding and impatient.

Gwen motions in the direction of MJ and the fake Peter. "Keep your voice down," she says, "I don't want him to hear us. But look—this is what I was trying to tell you."

Peter's eyes lock on his duplicate and all the blood seems to drain from his face. "Holy—"

"Shh," Gwen reminds him.

Peter blinks a few times, hard, as if he's trying to shake himself out of a dream. "He looks—he looks just like me. Who _is _that?"

"It's the guy who's been targeting you, the fake Spiderman. Listen, Peter, it's not your father," Gwen reiterates, because it's clear that after whatever he saw he still doesn't believe her. "It's a long story, but trust me. The guy you're looking at is the same one who's been attacking you. He has these …" Gwen struggles to explain, as Peter seems to grow more alarmed and confused with every second that passes. "Regenerative abilities, if he has prolonged contact with someone—the same way he just did with you—he can _become_ them."

Peter's mouth is wide open as he stares forward into the street, watching as his alter self stands stiffly next to MJ and nods.

"How did … how on earth …"

"It's a long story," says Gwen. "What's important is—"

"Is that Mary Jane?"

"Yes," says Gwen impatiently, "that's what I've been trying to tell you. She's been talking to him for almost ten minutes now, and I have no idea what he might try to do to her."

"Oh my God," says Peter, and Gwen almost feels a twinge of annoyance at his concern. "She thinks that's me."

"Yeah," says Gwen, very intentionally failing to mention that MJ was holding hands with him just a few moments before.

Peter steps forward purposefully, but she grabs his arm to yank him back.

"We've got to do something," he says vehemently.

"Not like this," says Gwen, "I don't want her getting involved, I don't want her to know too much. That's not fair."

"And having her stand there and talk to some violent, genetically enhanced chameleon—that's totally fair," says Peter, his voice controlled but sharp. "I don't want to drag her into this any more than you do, but what else are we supposed to do?"

"Just … wait," says Gwen, a little hesitantly. "Maybe—maybe she'll just leave at some point. I don't think he's even said a word to her, she's just standing there talking to him and I know how she hates you."

"Thanks," he snorts.

Gwen offers him a small smirk, trying to lighten the mood. "I like you just fine," she reminds him. He doesn't relax at all, though, watching the pair of them like a hawk, the muscles in his neck straining. She puts a hand on his shoulder.

"They're way out in the open," says Gwen, "and we're right here. We won't let anything happen, and once she leaves, we'll follow him."

Peter shakes his head. "You'll have to go with Mary Jane. I'll follow him alone."

Gwen takes her hand off his shoulder and steps forward to get his attention. "Peter, you don't even know what you're dealing with here."

"I know enough to know that it's too dangerous to risk you coming with me."

She feels the urge to argue with him like a reflex, like a chronic condition that she can't ignore. He needs her. He _needs_ her, he just doesn't know it yet, because he doesn't understand that he may have a hand in this, but she has a hand, a forearm and half her body in it—the lab, the solution, Bonnie and Clyde, the secret visits to Connors. She knows everything. If she can get to the lab and figure out how to fix this, she might be the only one who can help.

But for now, she relents. For now, maybe he's right. She can't do any good following him around the city and what he's too nice to say is that she'll only slow him down.

"Fine," she says. "But from now on, humor me on this." She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pen to mark a star on the top of her hand, then grabs his and makes an identical one before he can protest. He looks at her curiously and she explains, "Keep redrawing one. So then I'll know it's you."

A slow half-grin forms on his face in appreciation, but then he flicks his eyes back over to MJ. To Gwen's enormous relief, MJ is walking away, just as she predicted she would, and the fake Peter doesn't seem to be following her. Instead he has continued walking along the sidewalk, away from them.

"Go with MJ," says Peter. "I've got it from here."

"Peter …"

He lowers his eyes at her solemnly. "I think he's looking for you, Gwen."

She stares up at him. She knows he's right. "Call me as soon as you can," she says, balancing on her toes to reach up and kiss him. The gesture seems to startle him, but in a good way. For all his bold intentions and determination he seems all too quickly to forget that there's a task at hand, and she can't help but smile as she pulls away from him and he just stands there, his cheeks red and his breathing not quite regular.

"G'bye, then," he says, a little too happily for someone who's about to chase down their deviant clone.

She turns to make sure MJ is still in sight and by the time she looks back, Peter's already gone. She stares at the space where his body just was and feels a familiar ache, but doesn't let herself linger. She'll see him soon, and this time she will have him, all of him, not just a part. She feels confident that it's different this time. So she turns back on her heel and starts pacing down the street, toward where MJ is about to descend into a subway station.

"MJ!" she yells at the top of her lungs over the traffic, waving her hands up.

By some miracle her friend looks up and sees her. She waves amiably but keeps walking down until she sees Gwen gesture for her to stop. It takes Gwen almost a minute to get to the next intersection and cross the street.

"Hey," says MJ. "What are you up to?"

To her credit, Gwen makes a real effort to be casual. She thinks she'll tell MJ that she was studying at the library, or coming back from her apartment, or any number of things that are less aggressive than, "Why were you just holding Peter Parker's hand?"

She can see MJ's cheeks start to flare up before she stares down at her boots. "You saw that?"

Gwen stares at her friend disbelievingly. Is she seriously blushing over Peter? "Yeah," says Gwen, jutting her chin out involuntarily. "Yeah, I did."

Something in her tone must rattle MJ, because she looks up with incredulous eyes. "Are you mad at me?"

"Yes—_no!_" Gwen stammers, feeling like an idiot. "I just—what was that about?"

MJ scowls at her. "I don't like what you're insinuating," she says. "If you must know, Richard was in town for some stupid job interview and he was across the street, so yeah, I asked Parker to hold my hand for a few minutes to make him jealous. What the hell is up with you, Gwen?"

"Well," says Gwen. She isn't going to say it, she knows that she shouldn't, but her blood is pumping and the rush of adrenaline wells up her throat and she ends up bursting with, "We're dating. Peter and I are … dating."

Mary Jane claps a hand to her mouth theatrically. "A-_ha!_ So you finally admit it!" she says, gleeful.

This isn't what Gwen expected. She hates to admit that she was expecting MJ to look a little crushed, or at least not as happy as she is right now, because Gwen has been so suspicious of her interactions with Peter lately. Now her excitement makes Gwen feel like a clingy, paranoid version of herself, because she must have imagined it all. Of course MJ was never interested in Peter. And even if she were, MJ is her best friend … she would never go after someone Gwen liked.

"You don't have to worry about Pete," says MJ, waving her off, not noticing Gwen's cringe at her nickname for him. "I don't think he even spoke to me. He was just being a pal. For _once_," she says, with an eye roll.

"Richard's in town for a job interview?" Gwen asks, more than ready for a change of subject.

"I guess," says MJ, trying to sound nonchalant. Gwen raises her eyebrows and MJ deflates a bit and says, "I saw it on his Facebook page. I just didn't think I'd run into him."

"New York's a big city," Gwen agrees.

MJ kicks a crushed up soda can on the sidewalk. "He sucks."

"That, too."

They walk on a little aimlessly. Gwen figures they'll end up in a coffee shop somewhere, and she'll let MJ rant about Richard over some kind of pastry. It is pretty awful of him, she thinks, to show up in the city just days after breaking things off with MJ over a text. He could have just told her to her face if he knew he would be in town. Some part of Gwen almost hopes that Richard did see MJ with Peter, if only for the sake of justice. In the meantime, though, she doesn't say anything, waiting for MJ to bring it up. She doesn't want to strike a raw nerve.

To her surprise, MJ doesn't say much as they walk, looking thoughtful and put out. Gwen grabs her hand and says, "I know what will make you feel better."

MJ watches her curiously as Gwen pulls out the pen from before and traces a heart on her hand.

"What's this for?" asks MJ, bewildered.

Gwen shrugs and smiles, as if it were just a fun, spontaneous gesture. "Better than wearing your heart on your sleeve, right?" she says cheekily.

MJ nods, some of the usual determination back in her eyes. "Yeah," she says, letting her hand drop back to her side as if Gwen's lame explanation makes perfect sense. "You're right. Forget him."

They walk on a little longer in silence until they veer toward a coffee shop, the way Gwen predicted they might. MJ lingers a bit at the door before they enter, and says out of the blue, "I don't think he even saw me there, anyway."

"MJ …" Gwen says consolingly.

MJ shakes her head, opening the door and walking into the café, pushing her hair out of her eyes and trying to seem nonchalant. "It's just weird, you know. To know someone that well and for so long and then to just have them walk right past you like you're a complete stranger."

Nobody knows this feeling better than Gwen. She unwittingly imagines that feeling over and over again, standing on sidewalks, walking through the halls of a campus buildings, sitting in the dining hall and wishing she could _scream_ or throw a firework into the air an demand that Peter notice her when she passed, or at least spare her a glance.

"It'll get easier," says Gwen, even though it never did for her. She likes to think that MJ is more resilient than she is, that she'll be able to move on from this faster than Gwen would, and she also likes to think that what she and Peter have is far more powerful and compelling than what MJ could have had with Richard. For some reason she has always felt inextricably tied to Peter in an almost bleak, for-better-or-for-worse, forever sort a way nobody else their age is.

She feels silly, presuming that her feelings for Peter are more deep and insurmountable than anybody else's feelings for each other, but it's the only way she can explain the madness of trying to have him again and again, no matter the cost.

"That's easy for you to say, now that you've got someone," says MJ, a little begrudgingly.

"Hey, you'll find someone soon enough," Gwen says, knowing full well it's true. Already she can see several undergraduates and what might be a professor eyeing her pint-sized friend, who is maybe asking for it by wearing leggings instead of pants again. "You're Mary Jane Watson. Guys are falling at your feet."

She rolls her eyes. "The wrong kinds. Richard was different."

"You'll find someone better than Richard," Gwen says confidently.

MJ smirks. "Like Peter Parker, nerdy hipster extraordinaire?" she says.

Gwen smirks back at her friend, feeling comfortable, feeling at ease, and feeling a bit guilty that she can be this happy while her friend is this low. They're next in line, so they walk up to the register, and just before they get up to the counter Gwen jokingly says to her friend, "Ha, you wish."

* * *

Well. This week has, unsurprisingly, been incredibly awkward. I first and foremost want to thank everyone who said nice things to me in your reviews - I smiled and laughed outright at some of your comments, and it was a delightful pick-me-up after the terrible terrible stifling awkwardness that is me trying to interact with the opposite gender.

I wish I could say I was totally cool this week and handled everything like a mature adult, but let's be real, I'd be so much more boring if that were the case. So after all the awkward sideways glances and unnecessary tears and exams (wait, what? learning? but I'm having a romantic crisis, jeez!) of this week, I've decided to just not care, which is proving a bit impossible (because he is fucking EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME), but I'm sure will get better with time. He is kind of a dick. TheproblemisIlikethat.

Unrelated, did anyone see Andrew on the Ellen show? Minus the unforgivable beard growth on his face, he was hilarious and charming (as to be expected). I've never watched an interview with him that hasn't left me in stitches. There is comfort in knowing that there are decent men left in the world (unfortunately, they are all taken).


	21. Chapter 21

**Reckless**

* * *

Gwen is still wide awake by the time Peter swoops onto her windowsill that night. She does a quick scan of him before she jerks the window open, but to her relief he seems well enough, even if she still can't see his face.

"What happened?" she asks before he can fully twist himself to get inside.

He doesn't say anything, reaching forward with impressive speed and grabbing her hand. For a moment she is stunned by the almost aggressive gesture until he sees her tracing the star inked on her skin.

"You remembered," she says, feeling a little proud of the both of them.

He heaves a sigh and everything about him seems to loosen. "You will not believe what just happened," he says, and only then does he tear off the mask, ungracefully tossing it to the floor and rubbing at his eyes as if he still can't believe it himself. Once he's finished he just stands there and stares at her for a moment, with a critical kind of silence that she can't interpret. She's dying to ask him, to know everything right now, but she knows she'll only get the answers faster if she lets him drag himself out of whatever stupor he is in on his own.

She's waiting, trying to be patient, and she's so focused on that task that she can't help her surprise when he reaches out and puts his palms on her shoulders. It's the second time he has done it today, but it feels somehow less urgent, more reassuring. He sighs again, just staring at her and shaking his head.

"You're the real thing," he says, mostly to himself, and only then does she have an inkling of what must have happened.

"Peter …"

He nods. "Just a second," he says, and then he pulls her in with a sweet little tug and kisses her, a little more gently than she's used to. It feels like an apology. She doesn't want to brace herself for bad news, but now she can't help it.

When he pulls away his forehead lingers on hers for a moment. "He was pretending to be you," says Peter, his voice low.

She nods slowly. "But you knew it wasn't me."

"Of course I did," says Peter, "of course. But it didn't make it any easier." His eyes are on the floor again and he takes a step back from her, glancing at her guardedly with unmistakable guilt in his eyes. It takes her a moment to understand what's happening, why his arms are suddenly rigid at his sides like he's afraid to touch her again, why he is rooted to her bedroom floor like a caught criminal.

"Hey," she says, stepping over to him. "Whatever you had to do—you knew it wasn't me."

"It looked just like you," says Peter, unable to repress the slight shudder that runs up his spine. He looks at Gwen, his eyes almost pleading with her, like he needs forgiveness. "It looked _just like you_. And I had to _fight_ it."

Gwen's eyebrows knit together in confusion. "He didn't—he's not supposed to have abilities if he's pretending to be me, that's not how it's supposed to work."

"He didn't," says Peter darkly. He sinks into the chair that has now made a permanent residence by her windowsill and rests his head in one of his hands. "He was doing this thing—he would shift. He would be my dad one second, or me, and fighting me, and whenever I gained the upper hand, he would—" Peter stops for a moment, cringing. "He would just turn into you, and I'd hesitate, how could I—how could I ever hit you?"

"Peter, you knew it wasn't me," says Gwen fiercely. She doesn't like this, seeing him defeated and guilt-wracked by something that isn't even real, something that feels like her fault when she knows it isn't. "I'm right here. You know the difference."

Peter can't quite look at her. "When it screamed … it sounded just like you."

Gwen stands there, a few feet away from the chair, not sure what she can even say. She wants to apologize, to somehow make this alright, but how can she apologize for something that's completely beyond her control? How can she even begin to assuage a guilt that she can't understand? There is no standard for things like this, no model example for her to follow, and just like half the time with Peter she feels like they are trying to make up the rules as they go along and watching them blow up in their faces when something like this happens.

After a few moments she takes a step back and sits on the corner of her bed. She doesn't want to try and touch Peter again, not right now, when he's all worked up like this about hurting some version of her. She wonders with an unsettling feeling in her gut how this man was even able to transform into her, since he always seemed to need prolonged exposure to the person in the past, and not for the first time she shudders at the idea of laying unconscious and shackled to a bar for hours in some grimy basement with Peter. What happened in all the time that passed? Could he have had the forethought to memorize her face, to touch her hand and try to take on her image?

She can't help squeezing her hands together, staring down at her fingers as the skin around the pressure points turns white. She doesn't want to share herself, doesn't want anyone to have any piece of her, let alone her in her entirety. It never occurred to her that she might live in a world where that wasn't her choice anymore.

"How did it end?" Gwen finally asks.

Peter shakes his head. "I guess someone heard the screaming and called the cops. He busted out of there. Your buddy Captain Johnson tried to put another bullet in me," he says, running a hand through his hair, "but lucky for me, the chameleon-thing decided to throw one of those awful smoke bombs again."

Gwen's lips curl into each other, forming a tight line. She thinks of her encounter with Johnson at the kitchen table this morning, of all the visits to Connors, of Bonnie and Clyde in the lab. He needs to know, he needed to know all of this weeks ago, but better late than never.

"Peter, before this gets any further, there are few things I need to tell you."

He looks up at her, his eyes alert and set on hers for the first time since he came through her window. "What's that?"

She takes a breath and sits up a little straighter against the mattress. It won't be hard to tell him everything that she knows, everything that's happened, but it will be hard to explain why she didn't tell him sooner.

"First off—I've visited Doctor Connors. Twice now."

Peter's mouth opens just slightly. "What? Why?" he asks, careful not to sound too upset, because he knows that Connors is more of a sore point with Gwen that he ever will be with Peter.

She fiddles with the hair tie on her wrist, knowing she should look at him when she says this, but she doesn't want to see the hurt on his face when he realizes what a giant thing she kept from him. "The code that the guy used to break into OsCorp—it was Connors' code, years ago. We were the only two people in the building who knew it."

When she does look up at him, his expression is skeptical. "You're sure," he says.

She nods. "Yeah. I'm sure. That's how I knew he was involved."

"So you—you what? You just went down to that facility they locked him up in and they let you walk right inside?"

"Basically," she says.

He doesn't say anything and she can sense that he's waiting for her to look at him again, so slowly, reluctantly, she does.

"I just wish—"

"I know," she says, "I should have told you, I meant to."

His reaction isn't the one she expected. "It's just—I hate that you had to go alone. After everything that he did, I mean."

There's a solemn acknowledgement of her father's death that seems to settle heavily on the room for a few moments. It occurs to her that it's November now, that it will be his birthday in a few weeks, and no matter how many of his birthdays pass by it doesn't seem to get any easier to endure them. It takes her a second to collect herself, to remember the task at hand and keep talking.

"I didn't know he knew you were Spiderman, or I might have brought you," she says, even though she knows she probably wouldn't have.

"Oh, he knew it was me all right. Not outing me was the only favor I ever got from him."

"He seems concerned for you. For both of us." Gwen's fingers are digging into her bedspread at the thought of his sympathy, so blatant and so unwanted. "But he wasn't helpful on that first visit. He didn't tell me anything important, except that he didn't know who it was who broke into his room to ask for his code, but that he gave it. Apparently he thought whatever this guy was after would be a cure for him—he's dying, you know."

"Oh," says Peter, without much feeling, his face unreadable. "So … that's how the guy broke into OsCorp. But that doesn't explain how he can—"

"I know. There's more," says Gwen, "and unfortunately, it involves Owen."

Peter raises an eyebrow.

"He doesn't know about any of this," says Gwen defensively, "but he did something stupid, something very stupid that actually helped this make a lot more sense. He used our new solution on the rats we keep in the lab, and—well—it wasn't pretty. They were essentially trapped in between formations, all lumpy and malleable the way I'm assuming that man was when he was shifting back and forth between personas."

"Yeah," says Peter, "it was disgusting, I know exactly what you're talking about."

Gwen wishes there weren't a part of her so completely and objectively fascinated by the whole concept. She has to keep some of the excitement out of her voice. "Well the mice never had any intentions of shifting, I guess, so eventually they just returned to their normal states when they figured out how to control it—our formula, whatever it was that affected them like that. And I wouldn't have realized that that's what was happening, that it was why this man looked so much like your dad, if I hadn't seen Connors yesterday."

Peter's head snaps up even further. "Yesterday?" he asks a little guardedly, because yesterday is all too fresh in their minds—the kissing, the promise breaking, the complete upheaval of their little universe together. "When?"

"After I saw you." She waits to see if he has anything else to say, and although she can see him actively tapping his foot on the floor he stays quiet, waiting for her to continue. "Connors injected himself with the formula, too. He's still dying … but he has the same abilities as the guy we're after, or at least with whatever energy he has left."

Peter isn't doing a very good job of concealing the panic spreading across his features. "I don't trust him," he says vehemently. "How do we know this hasn't been him the whole time?"

Gwen shakes her head somberly. "He looks like a corpse."

"So what?" Peter says unsympathetically. "You said he has the same abilities, can't he just transform himself into a corpse?"

Gwen is a little embarrassed this didn't occur to her, but she shoots down the notion just as quickly as he brings it up. "No," she says, her voice firm. She knew Connors was too proud of a man to ever intentionally want someone to see him in that state, he would never concoct a plan that revolved around his own feebleness. And besides that, as much as she hates herself for it, she really does believe Connors is concerned for them and has no reason to hurt them more than he already has.

Peter sits on the chair, tense and unyielding. "I just can't—he already has way too much of a hand in this, _again_," he emphasizes. "I just can't believe he isn't involved more than you think."

Gwen feels a flash at annoyance at him, because it feels like he's not trusting her, but she reminds herself that it's Connors he is suspicious of, not her. She takes a breath and says calmly, "Well, you can come with me tomorrow to visit him and determine it for yourself."

He nods, as if this were already a given, as if he planned to come along with her whether she agreed to it or not. For a few moments he looks lost in thought, the scowl deepening on his brows, and she already knows what's coming next: "I just don't understand. Why didn't you tell me … _any_ of this?"

Gwen has a handful of reasons, but none of them are sufficient. After a few beats of trying to string them together, she shrugs, which is probably the wrong thing to do. She doesn't want him to think that she's blowing him off, that it doesn't matter to her, because it does.

"Everything was so … weird between us," she finally says, "and besides, I never—well, most of it wasn't relevant, or I didn't think it was. Until now, of course."

His eyes are level with hers, unwavering. He looks so serious, like something out of an old novel, and the way the light from the city is hitting him through her window he looks every bit the part of the mysterious vigilante that crawls through the streets at night. "I don't want any secrets between us," he says. "Not anymore."

Before she can answer, he's on his feet, closing the distance between them. She watches as he sits down beside her, the mattress creaking slightly under his weight. She wonders if she'll ever stop feeling like her heart is thumping in her throat every time he draws near.

"I know," she says, leaning her head into his shoulder, feeling an immeasurable relief now that everything is clear, everything is out in the open and she doesn't have to share the burden of her knowledge alone.

She lets the rest of her body sag into his and he puts an arm around her, steadying her there. She feels his fingers in her hair and shuts her eyes. For all the insanity of the past few months, she can't think of a time when she has felt safer than this, just sitting here with Peter and thinking nothing in the world could come between them—that if they can endure everything they've endured together, they're going to make it through this, too.

"We know his game now," says Peter, his voice low and comforting. "We know his tricks. We're gonna stop him, and everything will be fine."

He isn't expecting the smile that curls on her lips, but he returns it, somewhat hesitantly. It isn't that she necessarily believes that they'll succeed, that they're capable of outmatching this man and that everything will be okay. She just loves that for the first time he used the word "we."

* * *

****I know, I know, I haven't updated in a zillion years and this chapter isn't the most exciting, but it had to be done. NEXT chapter will pick up the pace. And I graduate college in like two weeks, so I'll have lots of time being an unemployed singer who writes Spiderman stories for no money after that!

In other news, our musical finally opened last night. I did not trip, drop any lines, or puke on anyone, so I'm going to consider the night a success. Also, there was free cheese after the show, which I like more than anything, even more than the guy who crushed my soul the other week - he tried to hug me and when I saw it happening, I shoved another piece of cheese in my mouth so large that it forced him to back away in horror. Priorities, ladies.

I lied. I did trip once. I'm a choreographer's worst nightmare.


	22. Chapter 22

**Reckless**

* * *

Peter leaves some time in the middle of the night, after she yawns one too many times and Peter hears sirens blaring somewhere in the distance. She isn't expecting him to be waiting on the sidewalk outside her apartment building when she leaves the next morning, but there he is, hunched over in a winter jacket and eyeing her doorman uncomfortably. When he sees her he waves her over, and without so much as a hello he says, "What time does the facility keeping Connors open?"

Gwen clutches her thermos of tea and blinks off the three hours of sleep she managed to achieve the night before. "I don't know—probably nine?"

"What time is it?"

"Nine thirty," she says, wondering how long he's been out here, and if he has even bothered going to class in the last month.

He nods, walking fast, too worked up to realize that his footsteps are near twice the length of hers and she is struggling to keep up. "You ready to go now?" he asks.

Gwen stares up the street, where a mile or so away there is a seat in a class she should probably be occupying in a half an hour. She tries to rationalize missing another class, tries to tell herself that she can catch up on the material or put in extra time at office hours, but her brain is too fried to even think that far ahead. "Sure," she says, because she doesn't think she would even absorb anything the professor said in this state.

Then something occurs to her that snaps her right out of her daze. "Wait," she says.

He stops obligingly. She feels a little silly that this only occurred to her now, but she has to be careful, she can't help it. "Your hand," she says.

"Oh. Shoot. I forgot," he says, extending it so she can see the star. She extends her own hand and they look at their matching scribbles for a moment, until Peter laughs nervously. "This is freaky."

Gwen lets out a breath, feeling her shoulders relax. "Better safe than sorry."

Peter nods. His eyes sober as he looks at her. "I won't forget next time."

They keep walking, shaking off the eeriness of the situation. Gwen sneaks secret glances at his hand, stiff at his side, as if at any moment the sign will disappear and reality will upend itself again. He catches her staring and slows down his strides, really seeming to notice her for the first time that morning.

"Hey," he says, extending his hand out. She's embarrassed, thinking that he is trying to show her the mark again, to reassure her, but instead he reaches for her hand and laces his fingers through hers.

She feels a strange heat in her cheeks and a weird, irrepressible urge to smile. It's embarrassing, how suddenly girlish she feels, walking down an otherwise dreary city street on one of the cloudiest days of the year with a world of trouble lurking in every corner, but she's never held Peter's hand before—not like this, not like someone who belongs to him, someone he doesn't have to hide or be ashamed of.

The walk feels like stealing something. It's so simple, it's so arbitrary, but just the simple act of holding his hand exhilarates her. But, like most moments with Peter, it's over too fast.

"This is it?" asks Peter, when Gwen halts without any warning.

"Yeah," she says, trying to shake herself out of her happy daze. Whatever this is, this unfamiliar euphoria, she doesn't want to bring it into this place or anywhere near Connors. "They're open."

The woman at the front desk looks up and ushers Gwen over, already knowing who she's here to visit. She eyes Peter curiously and asks for his name to put into the guest log. Peter looks over at Gwen and she nods at him before he says, "Peter Parker."

The woman nods and takes a moment to write it down. "Right this way," she says, ushering them toward the doors that lead into patients' rooms.

The walk has always been long, but today it seems longer than Gwen remembered. She feels her heart beating a little faster in anticipation of seeing Connors. It was one thing when she came here alone, to pretend to be calm and aloof and in control, but now that Peter is here—Peter, who she has bawled in front of and told everything to; Peter, who knows that she isn't as unaffected as she pretends to be—she's afraid that she won't be able to keep herself half as composed as she has in the past.

Peter reaches over and squeezes her hand, just briefly, and she looks up at him in surprise. As his hand drops and their eyes meet she remembers that he can hear everything, every uneven breath and too quick heartbeat, and she looks away self-consciously, wondering why every little gesture with him seems so familiar and yet so completely new and inexplicably thrilling.

The woman opens the door to Connors room, letting them inside with a perfunctory nod. Peter walks in first and that's as far as they get, because he stands ramrod still and won't budge from the doorway. Gwen touches a hand to his back, gently urging him forward, thinking that she can't really blame him for his shock. Yesterday Connors looked half-alive at best, and between the weight he has lost and the horrible mottled, sunken quality of his skin, he looks like something out of a horror movie.

Peter still doesn't move.

"Hey," she says, because he's tall and she can't see anything and she's feeling a bit impatient.

Peter's head is shaking. "Gwen," he says, his voice so low she barely hears it.

She thinks he's going to say something more and she waits, waits for all of two seconds, before saying, "What?" and pushing him forward, less gently this time.

He takes a few steps, reluctant and slow and grave. She cranes her head past him and sees it before he's fully out of the way—the limp, unconnected wires and needles riddled over the bed, surrounding the lifeless body of Connors.

The woman who accompanied them comes to her senses long before Gwen does, and immediately picks up the emergency landline at the front of the room and starts to dial. Gwen stands there, stunned, feeling panic and tears starting to clog up her throat and not understanding why. She hates this man, she wished nothing good for him, but it doesn't change the fact that he was the _last_ hope they had at gaining the upperhand.

"You need to leave," says the woman, her voice tight, her eyes trained on the hallway in anticipation of a crash cart.

"He's dead," says Peter, as if anyone needs any confirmation.

It's almost a heartbreaking thought, how it must have happened. How he must have sensed himself starting to go and deliberately, painstakingly pulled out every wire and needle monitoring him and keeping him alive before just laying there and letting everything come to a halt.

It's almost a heartbreaking thought. It would be, if this weren't the man who killed her father.

Peter takes a step forward, towards Connors.

"You need to _leave_," says the woman again, louder this time, sounding panicked. Gwen doubts that she has dealt with anything of this magnitude before. It's evident that she doesn't have any medical training.

Gwen hears the sound of a commotion down the hallway, of what is no doubt a team of people who will uselessly try to bring Connors back to life. She should move, she should get out of the way, but she's watching Peter. Watching as he darts forward with his almost impossible speed, then pulls something out of Connors rigid hand so quickly that she thinks she might have imagined it, before returning to her side.

"C'mon," he says.

She has no excuse to linger.

"Gwen," he says, and the sound of her name is enough to propel her out the door just in time for the team of doctors to barrel past them, and then she hears the barked orders and the clanging of equipment and the scuffle of feet against the tile floor before the door shuts in their faces and everything becomes indistinct.

They take a few steps away from the room and Gwen has to stop, unable to tear her eyes away from the door.

"I knew he was going to die," she says, almost under her breath.

Peter doesn't answer. She clears her throat.

"I wanted him to," she admits, feeling that horrible twist in her stomach again, the way she felt after her less than successful first visit to Connors. "I told him so."

Still, Peter is silent. She doesn't know what she even expects him to say, because really, there's nothing anyone could say to comfort her now, especially because she shouldn't _need_ comforting—she hates that she is distressed by this, that it is causing her to feel even a morsel of emotion. But still, Peter should say something. Someone should say _something_.

She turns to look at him, to prompt him to reply, but he's staring at a slip of paper in his hands. Everything was happening so fast that she almost forgot that what he pulled away from Connors' corpse.

He finishes reading it, then scrutinizes it before extending it out for her to take. "It's for you," he says.

She takes it from him. The tips of her fingers feel numb as she folds it back open and stares at the faint, sloppy scrawl, barely recognizable from a man who used to pride himself on perfection.

"What does that mean?" asks Peter, and she's suddenly aware of his shadow over her, of the proximity of his body.

"It looks like … it looks like our formula," says Gwen. She blinks at it, then realizes she is blinking back tears, and reluctantly swipes at her eyes. He wouldn't just write down a copy of the formula and press it into his hands before he died, he wouldn't let the last meaningful thing he left on this earth be something so redundant and useless. She needs to focus, she needs to figure out what's different about this formula than the one back at the lab because something _must_ be different, why else would he bother, but she can't for the life of her look at it in any reasonable frame of mind.

There are noises picking up from within Connors room. The sound of a flat line, the sound of people talking over each other, the sound of what she assumes are the paddles hitting his lifeless chest.

"Let's get out of here," says Peter.

She nods, carefully folding up the paper and slipping it into her jacket pocket. There are a hundred symbols and letters and numbers on that piece of paper but all she can remember as she tucks it away is the neat, tiny scrawl in the bottom right hand corner, so faint but screaming with the effort to be legible, as if it were the last thing that Connors ever wrote before the life extinguished from him: _For Gwen_.

* * *

When they hit the street Gwen is relieved for the snap of cold air on their cheeks. Peter is mercifully not looking at her, giving her the moment she needs to collect herself, following her as she wanders out of the facility aimlessly without any real intention of going anywhere. She can almost feel the weight of the slip of paper in her pocket, and she touches it again to make sure it's there, like it's alive and precious and has a beating heart.

"Gwendolyn."

The sound of her name is quiet and assured, but she still whips around, unable to project any semblance of calm. The finds herself facing a broad chest that is closer than she expected and before she even looks up she knows who it is.

"Captain Johnson," she says uneasily, glancing at Peter out of the corner of her eye, watching as his shoulders tense and he swallows in the least subtle way Gwen has ever seen.

Captain Johnson takes his eyes of Gwen to regard Peter for a moment, seeming to take into account everything Gwen just did. Peter, to his credit, stands up a little straighter, but the tension between the two men is palpable. Peter knows full well that it's Johnson who has been pulling a gun out of his holster and shooting at him every other night, but what scares Gwen is the way Johnson is looking at Peter—why would he have any reason to be narrowing his eyes like this? What could he possibly know?

Johnson lets his eyes fall, back to face Gwen again. "When did you stop calling me Mike?" he says, trying to sound conversational and chummy and failing miserably at it.

"When you started sleeping with my mother," says Gwen bluntly.

Peter shuffles his feet and clears his throat. Johnson doesn't even flinch. His features seem to sink back into its more natural state, stern and uncompromising, and he turns to Peter and says, "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to have a chat with Gwendolyn."

She is glad to some degree that Peter doesn't budge, glad that he is loyal to her and won't let anyone intimidate him, but at the same time she wishes he could be spineless just this once and look like anything but the punk kid he looks like now.

Johnson raises his admittedly fear-provoking eyebrows at Peter.

"Gwen …" says Peter, ignoring Johnson, looking over at her.

She hesitates for a moment. She doesn't want to talk to Johnson, that's the last thing on this earth she needs right now, but she can't risk digging a deeper hole for herself than she already has. She looks up at Johnson, trying to meet the challenge in his eyes, and addresses Peter: "It's fine. I'll call you."

He takes a second before he leaves, brushing her hand and putting just the slightest bit of pressure on the point where she is still marked. She listens to the sound of his footsteps slowly padding away. Johnson stands there, a few feet away but somehow uncomfortably close, watching as Peter leaves and letting the silence stew between the two of them until Peter has fully rounded the corner, shot them one last glance, and left their sight.

Only then does Johnson turn his attention back to Gwen. "Let's sit," he says, motioning to a bench not too far from them.

Gwen follows him, brushing a few leaves off of the bench and sitting down. Johnson sits beside her, as from her as he can, his expression set and heavy as if he is anticipating another meltdown like the one she staged in her kitchen.

"Gwendolyn," he starts, as if he is choosing his words very carefully. "I care about you, and your safety. I always have."

She juts her chin out slightly, willing herself not to respond.

"I've known you since the day you were born. I've watched you grow up, into a smart, independent, strong young woman," he continues, and Gwen feels her teeth starting to clench, because it's true—he never missed a birthday, he sent them presents at Christmas; he used to pick her up to sit in his office chair and spin her around, and he gave her a toy police badge back when he was one of the few people who obligingly called her "Officer Gwen" during her law enforcement obsession in second grade. All the memories come rushing at her, uninvited and embarrassing, because it was all carefree and inconsequential back then and now it seems like every move he made was a conscious effort, another step in his plan to replace her father all along.

He's still talking. She forces herself to make eye contact. "That's why I can't sit here and watch you put yourself at risk. If you can't consider the sake of the city, consider your own sake, and your family's. I'd hate to see anything terrible happen to you."

She can think of a dozen spiteful things to say, but on the forefront of her mind is, _You're not my father_. The terrible things have already happened, the terrible things are happening right now, whether or not Johnson thinks he can swoop in with a gun, blow it all to pieces, and make everything okay again.

Gwen shakes her head curtly. "I'm not sure what you want me to say. I've told you everything I know."

Captain Johnson's lips tighten. She has never seen an expression on his face quite like this, and as he leans in almost imperceptibly, Gwen feels a sudden chill in her bones in anticipation of something she doesn't even understand.

His voice is quiet and controlled. "I haven't told your mother," he says, and she almost relaxes, thinking that this isn't what she expected, that maybe he thinks he has caught her visiting Connors and her mother will be upset. The next words, though, near make her heart stop: "But I know that Peter Parker is the man behind the mask."

She needs to breathe. She has to breathe, and stop her eyes from blowing up like moons. She has to protect him.

"Peter Parker," she says evenly, "is my boyfriend. Believe me, if he were crawling the sides of New York's skyscrapers at night, I'd know."

Captain Johnson just shakes his head. "I was hoping you would be cooperative."

Gwen stands up from the bench, brushing her jacket off. "I don't know what you want from me," she says again. "Honestly, I have nothing to say that I haven't already—"

His voice is still quiet but somehow manages to overpower hers in an instant. "Don't think I believe whatever happened in your kitchen the other morning has even a grain of truth to it," he tells her, standing up to face her, looking down at her with his staggering height. "I've been keeping tabs on you, Gwendolyn. The missed classes. The extra time in the lab. The inexplicable visits to Curt Connors."

She feels her skin crawling at the idea of it. "That's … you've been having me followed?" she says, thinking she might just choke if she doesn't keep her voice level.

"For your own safety, yes—we've had an eye on you and everyone involved in the lab that was broken into at OsCorp," says Johnson, unapologetically. "I never had any reason to suspect you until recently."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Johnson pulls out his phone. A picture of Gwen and Peter kissing on the street is prominently displayed on the screen. She looks up at him in horror, her mouth wide open, struggling to find air.

"You're sick," she says. "That's—I can't believe you."

"Unfortunately, I can't afford to believe you, either," says Johnson. "Peter Parker has been on our top suspect list for several months now. I have every reason to believe that he is the masked vigilante Spiderman, and judging by the way you put yourself in the line of fire for him last month—the way you did back in high school, even—I have every reason to believe that you know his identity. Either you can cooperate now and tell me everything you know, or you can suffer the consequences when he is apprehended and revealed."

Gwen is voiceless. He is threatening her. Telling her he wants to keep her safe, and then blatantly threatening her on a public street.

"Please, Gwendolyn," he says urgently. "I want to help you."

She pulls her backpack up on her shoulders, straightening her posture and trying to look as cool and relaxed as she can. "I don't need any help," she says. "I'm sorry, Captain Johnson, but you're wrong."

She doesn't dare call Peter as she walks away from Johnson. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and turns if off completely, resolving to stick to pay phones or MJ's cell phone from now on, knowing it isn't worth the risk of them tracking her calls. She walks down the street, feeling Johnson's accusing gaze on her back, barely breathing until she rounds the corner. She wants to put a hand against the building, she wants to let herself fall apart for just a moment so she can figure out how to put herself back together again, but she can't help the terrible thought flickering through her mind: _They're watching_.

Everyone's watching her. Peter. The police. The chameleon. _Everyone_.

She squares her shoulders, holds her head high, and feels as if she is making the target on her back more visible than ever. It's a price to pay, but it's a small one compared to the shred of happiness she has stolen back from the universe. She has Peter. They're in love, they're together, and they're finally as happy as she never imagined they could be. No matter what happens next, nobody can take this away from her: these past few days, the tingling in her limbs, the way she feels when he holds her hand.

She will handle this, and more if she has to. It's an awful thought, one that goes against everything Johnson said about her, every word she has used to define herself—strong, independent, smart—but she can't seem to hear anybody when it comes to Peter, not Johnson, or her father, or even herself. They are on a crash course to somewhere, and she can only push through it and hope it's somewhere good.

* * *

Well guys, I have a bachelor's degree now. What I'm basically trying to say is, expect this fanfiction to get super fucking awesome, because I now possess the infinite, bottomless wisdom of a human who successfully read and then promptly forgot thousands of pages of textbook material in a major I have absolutely no plans on pursuing further studies or career options in. The good news is, I ended college the same way I began it: awkward, clueless, and unhealthily invested in writing fanfiction.

My sincerest apologies for the time it has taken me to update. I really meant to get a chapter up as soon as the show closed and finals were over, but here's what happened. Upon taking my last final, I came home and grabbed my computer to complete two crucial missions: turn in my final paper, and update my fanfiction. But then - PLOT TWIST - I yanked my computer charger, and it quite literally snapped in half and died in front of my very eyes. I was on reserve battery power and knew the computer would die in mere moments, so I was faced with a choice: turn in my paper that was worth forty percent of my grade and crucial to my graduation, or update a chapter of this story.

In my defense, I did hesitate. With a lot more psychological distress than I am willing to admit.


	23. Chapter 23

**Reckless**

* * *

When Gwen finally does manage to get a hold of Peter, she dials his cell phone from MJ's, ducking into the empty stairwell of her friend's dorm. It rings five times before he answers.

"Uh … hello?" he says, less than politely.

"It's me."

"Gwen?" he asks, his tone changing completely, much to her gratification. "Isn't this Mary Jane's—"

"Yes," she says, "I can't call you from my phone anymore. Listen—"

"What_ happened?_" he demands, talking over her before she can even finish a sentence. "With Johnson, I mean. I tried to stick around but there were just cops everywhere, Gwen, it was the weirdest thing—"

"I need to talk to you." Gwen hates this sudden paranoia, but she can't help but try to look at this from every possible angle, can't help but imagine every worst case scenario of them being tracked. She wracks her brain for an idea, and then says, "Meet me … meet me outside that greasy pizza place we like," because that's the best way she can think up to throw anyone listening to them way off their trail in this city.

She can almost hear Peter's hesitation. "Alright," he says after a moment. "Now?"

"Right now," she says, and then she hangs up the phone, afraid to incriminate MJ by spending any longer on the line with him. She ducks back into her friend's room and hands her the cell phone back, trying not to shrink under the full force of MJ's smirk.

"What was so important that you and lover boy couldn't bear to let me hear?" she says, batting her eyelids and fawning her hair.

"Ha ha," Gwen deadpans. She grabs her backpack from MJ's bed. "I actually have to go meet up with him now."

MJ groans. "Seriously? I've barely seen you at all this week, and you're picking that brainy loser over me?"

"We'll hang out soon. Get dinner or something," says Gwen offhandedly, knowing that the likelihood of that happening any time soon is slim at best. She misses MJ but the last thing she wants is to have an extra person to worry about when she's constantly looking over her shoulder as it is. She looks back at MJ on her way out the door, feeling a twinge of remorse at the dejected look on her face, remembering that Richard did just break up with her a week ago and Gwen hasn't exactly been the most supportive friend.

"Maybe at my family's apartment," Gwen clarifies, making the plans sound more concrete. With both Captain Johnson and Peter on high alert she figures her family's apartment is the safest place they can be.

MJ's scowl loosens a bit. "I miss your crazy brothers," she says, in that wistful way that kids without other siblings do. She shakes her hair out from under her sweater and when she reaches up to pull her hair into a ponytail Gwen's heart almost leaps into her throat.

"What the—" MJ snaps her hand back away from Gwen in confusion and alarm, and only then does Gwen realize that she has crossed the room and yanked her friend's hand up. "What are you doing?" MJ demands.

Gwen stands there, not sure whether she should feel foolish or afraid. "I put a—your hand, didn't I … " She doesn't want to say anything more, in case it _is_ him, and the idea of it roots her to the floor with terror.

MJ continues to stare at her, her normally large, cherubic eyes starting to squint. Gwen can't move. It's an ordinary enough expression for MJ to make—she's seen her friend express this kind of confusion over a textbook or a presidential debate or anything that has ever come out of Gwen's mouth about OsCorp—but what if it isn't? What if this isn't MJ squinting because she's confused, but some strange man inhabiting a body just like hers, narrowing his eyes because he's getting ready to strike?

"Oh," MJ says, her voice light and casual and a complete contradiction to the thoughts screaming in Gwen's head. "You mean that heart you drew? It's on this hand. My left one."

Gwen feels like her knees might sink into the floor.

"It's washing off," MJ says, rubbing the skin of the back of her hand with her thumb. She looks up at Gwen, who still hasn't quite moved, unable to think of how to explain herself. "What's going on with you, anyway? You seem so jumpy."

Gwen pulls the same pen out of her backpack, trying to smile reassuringly. "I've just been studying late," she says. "Here, I'll redraw it—"

MJ pulls her hand away. "I have an audition," she explains.

Gwen is still holding the pen in mid-air, halfway to MJ. She feels her chest constricting with frustration. That man has held MJ's hand for far too long not to be able to imitate her, and as long as he is out there she can't ever be sure of MJ's identity, not unless she agrees to wear this stupid heart on her hand.

"For luck, then," says Gwen weakly, because she can't think of some other obvious way to mark MJ besides this.

MJ shakes her head. "No," she reiterates, because Gwen is moving closer to her. MJ's eyebrows furrow into a scowl, her nose wrinkling in confusion and annoyance. "Gwen—"

"Sorry," Gwen mumbles, putting the pen down. The heart still hasn't completely faded from MJ's hand at least, so she isn't going to worry about it for at least another day. She takes a step back from MJ, draws in a breath and tries to recover the situation by asking about the audition. Thankfully MJ perks up and gives her the details fast enough that Gwen can extract herself from MJ's dorm in enough time to meet Peter.

Once she hits the street the cold air slaps at her cheeks and she picks up the pace, knowing that with Peter's abilities he has probably long since been waiting for her at the pizza place. She skirts through intersections and dodges pedestrians, walking as quickly as she can without drawing too much attention to herself, always acutely aware of the many sets of eyes that could be watching her as she goes.

"Gwen!" Peter calls from across the street, raising an enthusiastic hand and being as unsubtle as a person can possibly be. She cringes, but he doesn't know any better. He looks at her in confusion, faltering a bit as she doesn't react the way he thought she would. She crosses the street quickly, grabs his arm and pulls him inside, making sure her mouth is stretched into a smile, that her posture is natural, that everything about her looks relaxed and normal as her blood seethes under her skin.

The door shuts behind them.

"What's going—"

"Hold on."

Peter clamps his mouth shut and she continues to lead him deeper into the pizza joint, finding a table in the back. He sits across from her, leaning in close, his eyes wide and waiting.

Gwen intends to be calm about this. She intends to whisper it in a low voice, to says it in a way that assures him that she has the situation under control, but what comes out instead is a strangled, breathy: "Captain Johnson knows."

Peter doesn't so much as flinch but she can see that he is frozen, staring at her. "What—what does Johnson know?"

Gwen squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, trying to reclaim some of her composure, and then faces him again. His knuckles are white against the table, his hands balled into tight fists. She waits for a moment, eyeing the other people in the bustling room, but nobody is paying them any attention.

"He knows that you're …" Gwen doesn't want to finish, doesn't want to say it, but the moment she raises her eyebrows he knows exactly what she means.

"No," says Peter, immediately. He shakes his head, then stops, staring at her as if he is waiting for her to take it back. She watches his expression shift, his jaw starting to drop, his eyebrows twisting into a scowl. "He can't possibly—I've never—I've been careful," he says, and then he's staring at the table, talking to himself, barely above a mumble. He looks up at her and says more emphatically this time, "I've been so careful."

Gwen looks at him in what she hopes is a reassuring manner. "I know you have. And there's a possibility he's bluffing, but in case he isn't … he knows we're involved. He's been having me followed."

Peter sinks his head into his hands, his elbows propped on the table. "Oh, God." He stays there for a moment, and as much as Gwen sympathizes with him she can't help but feel uncomfortable sitting here with him so obviously emoting—if anyone has managed to follow them here, the implications of Peter's gestures would be all too clear. Before she can touch his arm and try and shake him out of it, he looks up at her and says, "I'm so sorry, Gwen."

"It wasn't your fault I was being followed," she says, "it was the thing at OsCorp—the break in—they followed all of us." She digs at a patch of paint coming off the table. "It was just exceptionally terrible timing."

Peter isn't quite looking at her. She knows what has to happen, and so does he, but he still asks as if they don't already know the answer: "What are we going to do?"

Gwen lets herself sigh, just once, because if she doesn't let herself have at least that she's afraid she's going to suffocate from the disappointment. They can't see each other anymore. She's known it since the moment Johnson pulled her aside outside the facility, but it doesn't make it any more bearable, having to sit here and decide it now.

"I'm going to go to OsCorp. I'm going to find out what Connors meant in that note to me, and maybe—maybe something will work out," she says, and even she can detect the false hope in her voice.

"Gwen," he says, his voice quiet and controlled, and she knows what he's going to say before he says it.

"I can't leave the city now," Gwen says, her voice resigned, every bit the opposite from the first time she had this argument with him. "If I leave that's all the proof Johnson needs. And besides," she says, her mind already halfway back to OsCorp, "I need to be here. If we're ever going to have a chance at stopping this guy, I need to be at the lab."

"They can probably watch you there, too," Peter says darkly.

Gwen tries not to think too hard about strained conversations with Owen over two mutated, sense-defying rats in a cage, tucking her hair back behind her ear with a grim acceptance that Peter is probably right. She wonders why nobody has approached them by now. It's a miracle she and Owen aren't behind bars.

"I have to find my father. He'd have to know something about this," Peter says, and his voice is so earnest that Gwen feels like her heart is pushing against her ribcage. "Even if it was just the two of us, it'd have to be enough to take him down, wouldn't it?"

Gwen offers him a small nod because she doesn't want to say anything that will betray her uncertainty. "Well that's what we'll focus on today. I'll work on the formula. You try and find your father. We'll meet tonight, at the park by the East Library," she says, careful to keep her voice low.

"Right," says Peter, his jaw set. He looks at Gwen, considering her for a moment. "Maybe it's good that Johnson is following you. At least you'll be safe."

"The enemy of your enemy is decidedly not your friend, at least not in this case," Gwen reminds him as they get up from the table and a group of rowdy high school boys grab it out from under them. She slings her bag over her shoulder, holding it protectively to her chest, bracing herself for when they leave the relative safety of the pizza joint and hit the crowded street.

Peter walks a bit ahead of her and holds the door open. She looks down for a split second because there's a napkin stuck to her boot, and in the time it takes to look back up she sees the door about to slam into her and holds out her forearm to stop it from ramming into her. She turns her head to find Peter, about to rib him, but he isn't by the door where she expects him to be.

That's when she hears the familiar click-clack of handcuffs locking shut.

She turns her head toward the noise, to where Captain Johnson has Peter leaned over, handcuffed, and directed toward a police car. Peter looks at her with his mouth set in a grim line.

"What's going on?" Gwen demands. Johnson doesn't even look at her, and neither does Peter. She darts forward, pursuing them, grabbing Peter's arm and nearly knocking herself off balance when Johnson abruptly moves Peter out of her way.

"Don't," says Peter, his eyes trained on hers, pleading for her to let this go.

She can't. "You can't just arrest him," Gwen yells, stepping in front of the police car so that Johnson won't be able to open the door and push Peter inside. "You have no reason, you have no _right_—"

Johnson finally directs his attention at her, opening his mouth to no doubt say something stern, something harsh and upsetting that will prompt her to move, but Peter beats him to it.

"Gwen, don't," he says again. "Please."

She shakes her head, feeling tears pricking under her eyelids, feeling powerless and stupid and wishing all these people on the street weren't watching them. She wishes he would fight, she wishes he would even try to struggle, but he is compliant and accepting and all too ready to give up. She knows that he doesn't have a choice, but she hates that she can't help him, that he can't even help himself.

"This is _bullshit!_" Gwen screams, rushing forward. Before she can make it another foot forward she feels the sinking sensation of her feet lifting from the ground, and a pair of firm, well-trained arms around her midsection, holding her back. She knows better than to kick and thrash at a police officer, but it's instinct, she can't help herself, she has to fight. Without Peter to keep the imposter at bay, Gwen will never be safe, _nobody in the city will be safe_, and Spiderman will never be redeemed. "_You can't do this!_"

She looks up desperately, trying to find Peter, her vision haphazard from being spun around. She sees him take a step toward her, unintentionally using all of his strength, sending Johnson backwards and reeling to regain his balance.

Gwen sees the action and goes limp, letting the officer drop her to her feet. He will do anything to keep her safe. She can't do this here, because he doesn't know any better than to fight for her.

"Gwen—"

Johnson grabs Peter roughly by his wrists, all but dragging him into the car, Peter's lanky frame twisting like a pretzel to fit into the odd angle. She hears the thud of his head hitting the side of the car before Johnson shoves him in. Their eyes catch for the briefest of moments and Gwen feels a horrible, inexplicable tug in her stomach. She's afraid to look away from him, to look away from the tinted window where he must be staring back at her. As the car drives away with him in the backseat she finds herself rooted to the spot, feeling like the rest of the world is a vacuum around her, unimportant, silent, pressurizing the air.

The car turns the corner and disappears. Gwen hugs her arms to her chest, not even protesting as one of the officers ushers her into a car, tells her that he's taking her home. With Peter and Captain Johnson gone and the imposter on the loose, there's no place else she can go.

* * *

Her brothers are gone when the officer drops her off. Her mother meets them at the door, staring at Gwen, staring at the officer, not even bothering to ask for an explanation. The resignation on her face as she thanks the officer and steps aside to let Gwen in is all the indication Gwen needs—Captain Johnson is a liar. He has absolutely told her mother everything.

The door shuts with a muted click. Gwen stands there, her heart still hammering in her chest, her fingers tight at her sides in anticipation. A few painfully long seconds pass and still her mother doesn't say a word. She just stares, not quite looking at Gwen, as if she is looking past her—looking at Gwen and seeing something Gwen can't see or fathom herself.

"Mom," says Gwen, breaking the silence because she can't stand it anymore.

Her mother tilts her head in a sharp motion toward the other side of the room. She follows her mother's gaze and sees that she has laid something out on the couch—a red and blue piece of fabric that takes Gwen a little too long to recognize as one of Peter's masks.

Gwen feels her breath hitch in her throat. They've never been this stupid before. Her eyes well and widen in disbelief, furious with herself for letting this slide through the cracks, furious with her mother for going through her bedroom, furious at every moment in between that she could have remembered that he took his damn mask off the other night and kicked it under her bed, and prevented this from happening.

When she finally meets her mother's eyes, they are steeled and set, as if she has been waiting for this moment all day.

"Please," Gwen starts, not even knowing what she is asking for. Forgiveness, or her mother's silence, or the chance to pretend none of this ever happened and everything is fine. Gwen knows she deserves none of it.

Her mother's arms cross authoritatively. Her stare burns against Gwen's cheeks.

"You had better tell me everything."

* * *

HAPPY 2013! Promise this is still getting updated. I got a little, er. Sidetracked. You know when you want to write a neat little one shot and then BLAMMO it turns into forty pages of graphic violence and inappropriate content? Well. GUESS WHO JUST STARTED WATCHING MISFITS! I encourage all of you (EIGHTEEN AND OVER ONLY) to join me, Robert Sheehan is a nice Andrew Garfield replacement during this Andrew-less lull between his films. I haven't decided if I'm posting the Misfits story or not, but I can say that I will be working on this story more, what with all my free time I have in the magical fairy unicorn world of unemployment and regretting my decision to major in Psychology.

Now I'm going to go find some pants. Maybe it's just me, but today feels like a wearing pants kind of day.


	24. Chapter 24

**Reckless**

* * *

Gwen doesn't move. She isn't sure if she's allowed to. Suddenly she feels half her size, like she is seven years old again, back when the worst thing imaginable was disappointing her parents—god, things were so trivial then, a window she cracked throwing a baseball, a toy she stole from her brother, a cranberry juice stain on the carpet—things that seemed like the end of her tiny universe, moments she wishes she could have back now that she is standing here with the weight of her mother's accusations stifling the room.

"Well?" her mother prompts her, her voice so quiet and controlled that a shiver runs up Gwen's spine. She wishes her mother would raise her voice, or grow red in the face, or anything but this.

Gwen looks at her mother helplessly. She can't say it. She can't say anything, not if there's any chance in this world that her mother can still be kept in the dark.

"It's just—it's a mask," Gwen stammers, but even she knows this lie is insulting to both of them. "Maybe it belongs to one of the boys."

Not one muscle in her mother's face moves. "Gwendolyn."

Gwen closes her eyes and tries to think, but there is nothing but shrill panic and quiet.

"I'm_ waiting_."

The words feel sound like they're underwater, muffled and distant, but she still hears her mother all too clearly. There's a clock in their kitchen, one that Gwen long since forgot about because their apartment is never this silent, but without the boys here she can hear the ticks and tocks measuring the time she has spent standing like a statue, wishing she could disappear.

She opens her eyes again. Her mother is a different kind of still, a terrifying, grounded kind. She is not going to back down.

"What … what do you want me to say?" Gwen asks.

Her mother doesn't wait even a beat to respond. "Who is he, Gwen? Who is he and what was he doing in your bedroom?"

Gwen shakes her head, feeling a lump in her throat. "I can't," she says.

"No, Gwendolyn, you no longer have a choice," says her mother, the words snapping like a whip. "Whoever this man is, you let him into our home. The man who _murdered your father_—"

"Stop," Gwen yells, and the volume of it shocks them both into taking a step back from each other. Gwen recovers as quickly as she can, taking a breath before her mother can find hers and saying, "You have no idea what happened that night—"

"Because you won't _tell me_," her mother says, and only then does she see the pleading expression in her mother's eyes, the desperation in her voice. She wants to understand. And it kills Gwen, because she can't let her. "Please, Gwen," says her mother, "if I'm ever going to—you have to tell me."

Gwen feels her throat tightening, her eyes prickling with the threat of frustrated tears. She hates to disappoint her mother this way, her mother is the only person in her life she can depend on, the woman who gave her everything and has only ever asked for her honesty in this moment in return.

The words sound strangled, like they are struggling to escape her: "I can't."

"_Gwen—_"

"I can't tell you everything," Gwen interrupts, putting her hand up and asking for some form of mercy. "I can't. But I can tell you that Spiderman did not murder my father. They were _helping_ each other that night—"

"But tell me how you could know that. You weren't there," her mother persists, her shoulders visibly shaking as she gestures, grappling at the air like she is trying to draw some sense out of the situation. "You weren't there on that rooftop, so tell me Gwen. _How could you know anything?_"

Gwen stares at the floors, at the little dings and creases in the hardwood where she and her brothers left their marks. Tonka trucks, dropped silverware, soccer cleats. Gwen closes her fists and wishes she could have everything back.

"Unless you knew him," says her mother, her voice uncharacteristically dark. "Unless you knew him from the start."

It is in this moment that Gwen makes a fatal error—she looks up reflexively, her neck jerking and her eyes locking on her mothers with unmistakable guilt. She looks back down as fast as she can, but the damage is already done. She hears her mother breathe in, hears the sound of everything locking into place too quickly, and all she can do is stand and wait.

"You've known him from the beginning," her mother repeats, her voice suddenly soft. It isn't a question anymore. She doesn't need Gwen's confirmation. For a moment the apartment is silent, so silent it feels like the air around her ears is roaring, because she knows what her mother is going to say long before she says it, because she has imagined this scenario on sleepless nights in bed too many times to count.

"It's Peter Parker," says her mother, so softly that Gwen knows she could easily pretend she hadn't heard. She feels her mother's eyes on her, compelling her to look back up, but she can't. She knows her face will betray her faster than any words will.

"It's Peter Parker," her mother says again, this time less in awe and more in accusation. "Isn't it?"

"Mom," says Gwen, protesting.

"Oh my god," says her mother, and only then does she break the intimidating pose and start pacing the foyer, toward the living room. "Oh my _god_."

Gwen follows her, on her mother's heels, blurting, "You see, Mom, you know Peter—you met him, you know he's a good kid, the police are just—"

"Stop," says her mother, and her voice isn't even raised, she's just looking at Gwen with this helpless, bewildered expression and it occurs to her for the first time that her mother looks _old_. Old, and worn out. Gwen takes a step back. She doesn't want to notice these things. She doesn't want to notice and know that she is the one to blame.

Her mother reaches the couch, where the mask is laying, watching them in its detached, ominous way. "I didn't …" Her mother shakes her head, staring at the mask, then extending her hand so she can feel the fabric between her fingers. She moves like her body isn't aware of it, as if she has been smacked and is now standing in a trance-state of disbelief. "I didn't think you were even still seeing that boy. So this—this whole time, you've been—"

"No," says Gwen vehemently, because she thinks it's important, important that her mother understand she never once made this decision easily. "No, I just—I haven't spoken to him in years, Daddy made him promise, but I—"

Her mother's eyes are welling with angry, incredulous tears. "Your father specifically told you to stay _away_ from this boy, and yet you _persist_—"

"I love him," she says. Gwen knows it's a stupid argument, that it sounds childish and rash coming out of her 20-year-old mouth and that those three little words do absolutely no justice to the way she feels about Peter, but she feels the heat of this argument burning in her lungs and it bursts out of her before she can suck it back in.

Her mother stares at her, her mouth slightly open, her eyebrows set in a way Gwen has never seen them before. "You don't know what love is, Gwendolyn," she says.

Gwen doesn't dare contradict her. Not after everything her mother has been through these past few years. She breathes in, barely moving. It's too late to hide this from her mother. But maybe it's not too late to make her understand.

"Peter is good," she says softly. "I know it. Daddy knew it. When he told Peter to stay away from me … it was to keep me safe."

Her mother isn't looking at her anymore.

"And Peter kept that promise," says Gwen. "He kept it for so long, even when I begged him not to, but we can't—_I _can't …" None of this sounds very responsible, or convincing in the slightest. She takes another breath, trying to ground herself, but in all her imagined conversations with her mother she has never let them get this far. "I'm sorry … that I didn't tell you. I didn't think it would ever come to this."

"To what, Gwendolyn?" asks her mother, her jaw tense, her hands making inexplicable, angry gestures in the space in front of her. "To you chasing around a some boy who could get you _killed? _You let him in this house, you let him near your _brothers_, you—you have been lying to me, you've been lying," she says, her voice growing quiet, her eyes wandering away from Gwen in disbelief.

Gwen shakes her head. "No," she says dumbly. "No, no, I—"

"You've been lying to me for years," says her mother, pacing the floor away from her, not even hearing.

"_Mom_," Gwen sputters, because it feels like her lungs are bursting—she didn't mean for this to hurt anyone, least of all her mother, who has hurt worse than Gwen will ever know, but there's no way to take this all back. It's not just the past few months of reconnecting with Peter, or the years they spent orbiting each other, it's the moment she first laid eyes on him and then the inevitable crash course that she could never steer herself away from. She didn't want this, she didn't ask for it, she has never had a choice.

But now, staring at her mother as she holds her hands up to the sides of her head in shock, she knows that she did have a choice. She has always had a choice. She could have told her the truth any moment of any day in the years since her father died, but she couldn't tell her mother something she didn't want to believe herself. She thought she would be stronger, she thought she would stay away from Peter for good, and that admitting to what happened would be admitting a weakness in her that she didn't want to face—a weakness that is staring back at her with wide, red-rimmed eyes and quivering lips, demanding an explanation, knowing that an explanation will never be enough.

"I can't—I can't," her mother says, shaking her head. "I don't even know what to do."

The disappointment in her mother's voice makes her eyes sting, but Gwen can't let this faze her. The urgency of everything hits her at full force again and she takes a step forward and hopes that her mother will listen.

"There is a man on the loose, pretending to be Spiderman. You've seen the news, the bank robberies, the assaults—they aren't him. This man, he can shape shift—"

"You're being ridiculous," her mother mutters, throwing the mask back down on the couch with a tight snap of her wrist. "For Christ's sake, Gwen, open your eyes. They're the same person—"

"No," Gwen exclaims, louder than she should. Her mother startles and Gwen knows she can't waste a moment of her attention. "The imposter is real. It's an accident, a mistake, it's OsCorp's fault—"

"It's always OsCorp, how convenient—"

"_Listen to me!_" Gwen shouts. Her mother opens her mouth to shout back but Gwen holds up her hand and says, "You wanted the truth, you asked for it and now you're going to get it, so _listen to me_." Gwen walks closer to her mother, until their eyes are level and their toes are only inches apart. "There is a madman on the loose, and I know it sounds insane, but he can shape-shift—into anything. You, me—even Peter. And when he does this, he can take on Peter's abilities, and go out in the city and create chaos in Spiderman's name."

Her mother is shaking her head.

"I'm not asking you to believe me for my sake, or for Peter's," Gwen says carefully, trying to relay the urgency of the matter without revealing her own panic, brewing under the surface. "I'm asking you to believe me because everyone's safety is at stake here. And the only person who can stop this guy is Peter."

There is a moment where Gwen is afraid her mother is actually baring her teeth. "Then why hasn't he," she says lowly.

Gwen looks her straight in the eye. "It's hard to get anything done with the police trying to kill you," she says, "and for that matter, your boyfriend just arrested him. So as far as I can see, unless they release him, we're all screwed."

"If he's Spiderman why can't he just escape?" her mother challenges her, even though it seems like the lines around her eyes are softening and she might just be starting to believe.

"Isn't it obvious?" says Gwen. She crosses her arms over her chest, glancing briefly at her shoes because she needs a moment, just one second to collect herself. "He's protecting me. And his aunt. And everyone he cares about." She swallows hard, feeling a pang in her chest, thinking of the brief, fleeting moment she caught Peter's eyes that last time before the cop car drove away. "That's why he wears the mask. He isn't hiding, he isn't ashamed, he's a _good person_ who has to—"

A sharp rapping interrupts them—a knock at the door. Neither of them reacts for a moment, and finally her mother yells, "Who is it?"

"It's MJ," calls the voice on the other end. "Is Gwen home? I just—I was walking home from my audition, and I _really_ need to pee!"

Gwen can see her mother deflate, her shoulders start to cave in and her arm lift up as if to wave MJ inside. "Come—"

"No," says Gwen, under her breath, sharply enough that her mother freezes mid-sentence. She raises her eyebrows at Gwen.

"The doorman," Gwen says quietly. "He didn't ring her up."

Her mother looks uneasy, but not nearly uneasy enough. "Mary Jane is here often enough," she says, walking forward.

"Mom, don't," says Gwen, trying to keep her voice down, because she doesn't want whatever it is on the other side of the door to hear. Her mother keeps walking, so Gwen grabs her forearm, trying to hold her in place.

Her mother shakes her off. "Gwendolyn," she says, shaking her head, reaching for the door. "Come on inside," she says as she twists the knob.

Gwen can't explain why she doesn't fight her mother harder, why she doesn't scream or rush forward or do anything to stop her from opening the door. She supposes it's because she knows that in the end, it doesn't matter whether or not her mother opens it. If it's MJ, then it's MJ. And if it's not, he will get inside, and he will find her, with or without an open door ushering him inside.

The door creaks and Gwen sees her friend's petite form in the doorway. She doesn't react for a moment, just staring at her. MJ is shifting her weight uncomfortably, half-hopping in the doorway with her mouth pinched, not even looking at Gwen; her eyes dart down the hallway where she knows the bathroom is, but it's not enough for Gwen that she has MJ's mannerisms, that she knows things that MJ knows.

Gwen steps forward and grabs MJ's hand roughly, knowing that if it's the imposter she needs to do this quick, before he outmatches her.

"Ow," MJ exclaims, right on the heels of Gwen's mother scolding her with a sharp, "Gwendolyn!"

"Where is it?" Gwen demands, staring at MJ's bare, pale hand.

MJ tries to yank her hand away. "What—what are you _doing?_ I said I needed to—"

"You don't move," says Gwen menacingly, "until you tell me what I drew on your hand."

MJ stares at her, her eyes wide. "What the _hell,_ Gwen?"

Her mother is frozen, watching her with her mouth agape, only now really seeming to comprehend the magnitude of the situation and everything and everyone involved in it. Gwen looks back at her, exhaling a breath, still clutching to MJ's hand. _You have to understand_, she tries to tell her mother. Gwen is not the only one in danger now.

"Tell her," says Gwen's mother softly. "Tell her what she drew on your hand, Mary Jane."

MJ wheels around to look at Gwen's mother, her expression gobsmacked, her eyes starting to mist with confusion and hurt. She sees the grave look in Gwen's mother's eyes, takes a shaky, uncertain breath and turns back to Gwen to say, "A—a heart. You drew me a heart."

Gwen doesn't loosen her grip. A tear threatens to roll down MJ's cheek.

"Let go of me," she says again. "Gwen, let go."

Gwen releases her. She feels heat flooding into her cheeks but she doesn't apologize or so much as take a step back. The room is punctuated with silence and the sound of MJ breathing as she nurses the red ring around her forearm left by the impression of Gwen's hand.

"What's going on?" asks MJ in a small voice.

Nobody answers her. She takes a few steps back, looking at them with clearly mounting disquiet, until she hits the door with her shoulder and shudders at the impact.

"Gwen?" she asks, her face pale, her cheeks and her nose burning red.

Gwen tears her eyes away from her friend. "I have to go," she says. She kneels down and grabs her purse from the floor. She can't spend another second here while Connors' formula is demanding every shred of attention she has left.

"Where are you going?" her mother demands.

"OsCorp."

"I'll come with you—"

"No," says Gwen sharply. Her mother is about to argue. "You should stay here. Wait for the boys to come home. I've got this."

Her mother nods. "Be careful. Stay in touch."

"Gwen," MJ bleats, looking more bewildered than ever.

"I'm sorry," says Gwen, wishing she had the time or the charity left in her to squeeze MJ's hand, to reassure her, to somehow make up for the insanity of the last few weeks, but she doesn't. She looks at her mother, then back at MJ, before straightening her bag on her shoulder and saying a second time, "I'm sorry, I really am."

* * *

Well, I'm officially done dating college boys, ever. I briefly forayed back into the dating world by going on a casual coffee trip, and the guy basically cried when I wouldn't let him grope me in his car afterward. Like, he took it really personally like some wounded bird, then asked me if there was something _wrong_ with him, and is _that _why I wouldn't let him feel me up. Is this really the world we live in? Are we expected to shell out our boobs after paying for our own two dollar hot chocolate and listening to men talk about football for an hour?! Why isn't it like the movies, where after the first date we kiss chastely and then take a casual ride web-slinging hundreds of feet over Manhattan?

My favorite part is that he's now writing angsty facebook statuses alluding to heartbreak. After ONE UNOFFICIAL DATE. Where he tried to GROPE ME IN HIS CAR. I literally am roflcoptering to the end of the universe, what a big fat baby. (My insensitivity on this topic may or may not explain the term of endearment "ice queen" I earned back in my high school days).

NOTE TO MEN: These behaviors are the QUICKEST way to make sure you will NEVER HAVE A GIRLFRIEND EVER.


	25. Chapter 25

**Reckless**

* * *

Gwen is halfway to OsCorp when it occurs to her that OsCorp is the absolute wrong place to do this. Only yesterday Johnson was telling her that he's been tracking her for weeks, tracking everyone there, and even if this formula in her hands is a harmless antidote, she can't risk someone interfering. She can't risk a supervisor hovering over her shoulder at the wrong moment, or Owen asking too many questions. Aside from unintentionally raising suspicions, she just doesn't have the time, not now. Now that Peter is stuck behind bars and every second that ticks by is another second that the entire city is defenseless to attack.

She stops short stands stupidly at the corner of a busy intersection. A woman with a bunch of shopping bags slams into her and doesn't look back. Gwen snaps back to her senses, shuffles out of the crowd and stands on the side of the road, trying to decide her next move.

OsCorp is the only place in the city that she has access to that she can make this work. She could try the university labs, but she doubts her abilities to sneak the materials, and doubts that they would even possess the materials she needs. She leans against a brick wall, leans the back of her head to rest on it.

_Think_. _Think, think, think. _

God, she's tired. She hasn't let herself stop in what feels like months. She blinks, trying to keep herself alert and on point, and sees bright, multi-colored lights in the distance. _Christmas_ lights. Is it seriously almost Christmas?

She takes a breath. She needs a place to go, she needs access and convenience, but above all she needs privacy.

And that's when it occurs to her: Peter's father. He had labs hidden away underground, multiple labs, and if Gwen's memory isn't failing her, she still knows where one of them is.

It occurs to her how dangerous and stupid this might be—Peter's father has been missing for months now, and Peter said it was one of the labs that he found all torn apart that made him suspicious of his father's disappearance in the first place. But it's a risk she's going to have to take if she wants to put an end to this. She takes a breath and throws herself back into the throng of New York, weaving in and out of crowds, relying on her feet to carry her to a place she hasn't seen in years.

She has almost arrived when she feels her phone buzzing in her pocket. She assumes it's MJ—she and MJ have only ever really fought four or five times since they've known each other, and the calls from MJ usually start about twenty minutes after the fact, which would put her right on schedule. Gwen feels a pang of guilt for ignoring it, albeit a short-lived one, pressing on.

No more than ten seconds pass before it buzzes again. "Come _on_," Gwen mutters, because she has to check now, she knows she can't afford to ignore two calls in a row at a time when there are so many factors on the line.

It's her mother. Gwen slams her thumb down on the screen to answer. Her mother wouldn't be calling her now for anything trivial.

"Hello?"

"Have you heard?"

Gwen feels a knot of panic twisting in her gut at the breathlessness in her mother's voice. "What? Heard what?" There's a pause, the tiniest beat of silence, but Gwen has no patience. "_Mom_."

"I just got a call from the station. Captain Johnson never made it back."

Gwen stops on the street. She hears her own breath hitching without feeling it. "What do you mean? What's happened, where's Peter?"

"I don't know."

She balks, her jaw unhinging. It takes her a few moments to recover herself, and she steps near a phone booth to get out of everyone's way. "Peter wouldn't—Mom, I know what this looks like, but he went willingly, he would _never_—"

"No, Gwen, I know, that's what I'm trying to tell you. Nobody knows where Peter is. Someone started shooting at the car—"

"_What—_"

"Nobody is hurt, as far as I know, but someone took him. It looks like both he and Johnson and the other officer in the vehicle were hit with tranquilizers and—"

"He took Peter," Gwen says lowly. The realization reminds her of when she was small and accidentally set her hand down on a hot plate—she jerked her hand away and cried out before she even understood why, her body anticipating the pain that her mind couldn't understand. She stands there as a similar horror overcomes her, the impact of the realization trickling in, overwhelming her in its wake. "Oh my God."

"Gwen. You need to come home."

"No."

She understands that she is truly on her own now. That she has nobody, not Peter, not Johnson, not a single person in this city that can protect her from a man that is surely coming for her next.

It also means that she is last person standing. She is truly the last person who can put an end to this, the only one who has a prayer of saving Peter—she just has to be ready for the imposter, has to have the antidote in hand before he inevitably finds her.

"Listen to me, Gwen, you come home this instant—"

"You have to trust me, I know what I'm—"

"You're a _child_, Gwen. A _child_. And whatever is happening here, it's not your fight, it's _not_ your responsibility!"

She feels the knot in her stomach unraveling, relaxing. It's an inappropriate moment to feel a surge of confidence like this, but she straightens her shoulders and plants her feet in resolve. She has heard these words before. They are the same words she has said to Peter countless times, the same hopeless words she would think as she willed herself to sleep every night, wondering why he didn't just give it all up and choose her instead. For the first time she knows how it feels to be on the other end of it. Now she knows how it feels to watch someone who loves her beg and plead for something she doesn't have the power to walk away from.

"There's nobody else," says Gwen solemnly. "Nobody else can stop him. It is my responsibility now."

She hangs up the phone and allows a moment to collect herself, but she finds that she doesn't need it. She feels suddenly clear-headed and sure. She feels like the Gwen that she was only months ago, before Peter came crashing back into her life, before this imposter Spiderman hit the scene. She is capable. She is ready.

She doesn't hesitate when she finds the dimly lit alley that gives way to the staircase where she last saw the lab. The door doesn't open on the first try. This time she doesn't even hesitate—the boots are on, the door is old, and in less than ten seconds Gwen busts it in, feeling suitably bad-ass as she walks away from it without a second glance. It takes a bit of memory to remember which of the winding hallways leads to the more equipped lab, but once she finds it she lets herself in easily.

The lab is pristine and untouched. It's clearly not the one that the imposter Spiderman tore apart a few months ago, which brings her some limited relief. There's a chance, then, that he has no idea that it's here.

It takes a little while for her to get to work. Peter's father is an organized man in all the ways Peter is not—all of the materials and substances are laid out in an orderly fashion, neat and clean and usually just where she expects them to be. Still, it takes her a few minutes to adjust to this unusual space, and to take out Connors scribbled note and try to decipher just what changes need to be made to the original formula to come up with this one.

She tries not to let herself think about the importance of what she is doing, that she really only has one crack at this. Not that Gwen is prone to making mistakes in the lab, but any mistake right now could be a costly one. Every now and then she feels a brief flash of panic—_He took Peter_—but if she shuts her eyes, hard, and exhales it away, she can grab back her focus before it overwhelms her.

At some point—maybe hours, maybe only minutes after her arrival—she is so absorbed in anticipating a reaction that she doesn't notice the figure in the room's window until the door is creaks open. She looks up with a start, feeling her heart leap into her throat, the beat of it thrumming urgently in her fingertips. She is so gravely certain that he has come for her, that she is _too late_, that when she looks up to a stranger she doesn't know whether or not to feel fear or relief.

"Gwen Stacy?"

The man's voice is rough and almost sickly, but familiar. Gwen stares back at him. There is an uneven, patchy growth of beard obscuring his face, the rest of which seems too pale, with sharp cheekbones and sunken eyes. She doesn't recognize him as anyone she knows. She takes a step back. He looks half-crazed, like a homeless person, and there is an urgency dancing in his eyes that is sets her on edge.

He takes a step forward, insensitive to her fear. "Where's Peter, is he here?"

Even after he says it, it takes her a few moments to understand, to really look at him and make the necessary connection. "Mr._ Parker?_"

He narrows his eyes at her in confusion. "Yes. Of course."

She still hasn't moved. She has learned in the past few months to never trust what she sees, and she knows that there is a very real possibility that this isn't Peter's father at all.

"Where have you been?"

His shoulders seem to slump, his chest deflating. He looks weary and spent. "It's a long story."

She takes a step back. There's a beaker in her hands and she can't remember for the life of her what's in it, but she hopes for her sake that whatever it is will burn if it comes to splashing it in his face. "I—I don't want to be rude or anything," she says, because it's true that her interactions with Peter's father have been less than cordial in the past. "But how am I supposed to know if it's you?"

It's a stupid thing to ask. She should have asked him something personal, something only the real Richard Parker would know, but she hardly even knows the man and Peter barely talked about him. She's got nothing. She clutches the beaker, still half-anticipating an attack.

His stare is incredulous. His teeth, Gwen notes with some dismay, are grimy and yellow and very unbefitting of a man she has always found condescending.

"What do you mean? What the hell are you even doing down here, anyway? This is my facility."

It's the sternness of the reprimand that finally makes her shoulders relax and her grip on the beaker loosen. She sets the materials down carefully and says, "You've been gone for almost three months."

For an almost imperceptible moment he looks stricken by her words. Then, as if she imagined it, he gives a calm nod. He looks around the lab, noting with a scrutinizing eye which materials she has pulled out and the scribbles of notes she has etched onto the whiteboard on the other side of the room. His eyes wander further, toward Gwen, past her, to all sides of the room. Gwen doesn't have to ask to know that he's still looking for Peter.

"What happened to you?" Gwen presses on. "Peter's been looking for you, all over the city. We thought—I thought you were dead."

"Where is Peter? I need to talk to him."

"You can't."

She shouldn't feel this flash of irritation at him. She has no idea what he's gone through in the last few months, and based on his disheveled, dirty appearance, it isn't hard to imagine that he has endured a lot worse than she and Peter have. Still, she feels a twinge of impatience toward this man who has no idea of the chaos he is partially responsible for unleashing on the city. It is, after all, Richard Parker that the imposter has been posing as for so long.

"What do you mean?" His scowl is nothing like Peter's, calculated where Peter's is thoughtful, harsh where Peter's is almost goofy with youth. "Where is he?"

"I couldn't tell you," Gwen says, not successful this time in keeping the edge out of her voice. "There's a man, he's been posing as Spiderman by somehow morphing himself into you, he's been doing it for months. Peter's been trying to stop him, and now—now he's taken Peter, and I have no clue where they are, but we don't have to wonder too long, because the moment I hit the street I become bait. Turns out he's got it in for me, too."

She looks up at the man sharply, feeling the heat of frustration rising into her cheeks. She hadn't meant to sound so biting, hadn't meant to let herself start so rant, but it's hard to ignore all of the pressure mounting on these sparse few moments she has left to figure this out while he's standing there, useless and distracting her.

And then it occurs to her: he's _Richard Parker_.

Before he can recover from the shock of what she's told him, she rushes forward, thrusting the antidote formula at him. "The morphing abilities were caused by a formula leaked from OsCorp. This is the only lead we have on an antidote, and I need to finish it, fast."

His mouth is open, and the breath he takes in is one full of confusion and uncertainty. She watches as he stands there a few moments, staring at the fading, crumpled piece of paper in her hands, and she is a little surprised that the first thing he says is, "That's Connors' handwriting."

"It is. I don't have enough time to explain. If we want to get Peter back, you have to trust me."

There's a beat where he stares at her in that same disbelieving, incredulous way that he did back when she was seventeen, back when a look like that was swiftly followed by an undeserved reprimand in a restricted weapons lab at OsCorp or the back of a getaway van. But something in his expression shifts and hardens. It isn't quite respect, but it's something close to it.

He plucks the piece of paper out of her hands. "How far have you gotten with this?"

* * *

As they work they fill each other in on the details of the past few months, mumbled between measuring chemicals and watching reactions and scrawling notes on the whiteboard. Peter's father make a wry, cryptic comment about how last he heard, Gwen and Peter weren't maintaining any contact; Gwen manages not to blush and says that circumstances forced them to, which isn't completely a lie, since the imposter Spiderman was OsCorp's formula through and through. She tells him about Connors involvement and recent death, and Peter's father relays a brief, sparsely-detailed account of the past few months.

He tells Gwen that he was working in one of his other facilities a few months ago when a smoke bomb went off. He says he had been prepared for such an attack after helping Peter stop OsCorp break-in attempt, but before he could fasten the gas mask he was tranquilized, and woke up some time later chained up in a basement that sounds familiar to the one she and Peter woke up in not too long ago. He tells her he remembers very little, that until recently he has been kept in an almost constant haze of subduing drugs, but that the man who usually tranquilized him hadn't returned in a few days.

"As you know, I have similar abilities to Peter's. It took a few days, but once I was strong enough to recover them, it was obviously easy enough to break out of there myself, which may be some help to us later. It's the only place I can think of to look for Peter."

They continue working in companionable silence for another few minutes. She doesn't mind when Peter's father hovers over her shoulder, checking and double-checking her work. While she is reasonably confident in her abilities, it's comforting to know that the responsibility for this isn't hers alone.

"Here's my thoughts on the matter," says Gwen, without looking up from her work. "I think when he initially captured you—" She pauses for a moment, draining one of the beakers carefully—"he thought you were Spiderman. That's why he took the biocables, created his own suit, right? I imagine he was surprised when Peter came after him."

"And Peter hasn't been able to stop him?"

Gwen shakes her head curtly. "It's hard. He can change form. Into anybody—you, me, Peter, even our friends. As long as he has physical contact with them he can completely reconstruct his physical features, take on your abilities."

"Turn off that hot pad, would you."

Gwen switches the dial down. "We're going to need to be ready. The formula. Smoke masks. How far is the place he kept you?"

She can see Peter's father frowning in the periphery, but he doesn't pause in his work to acknowledge her. "You're not thinking of coming, are you? You'll only get in the way."

The comment stings. She isn't used to people being so blunt with her, at least not since she rose through the ranks at OsCorp. But she keeps her neck straight, her stance firm. "Maybe. But of all of us, I know the most about what we're dealing with. And even if that's not useful, at the very least he can't morph into me and convince Peter that I'm there when I'm not."

Peter's father doesn't answer, and she assumes that means he won't try to stop her. Satisfied, she sets back to the whiteboard, erasing things as they go along. She has this dark but oddly calm resolve to get rid of all the evidence, thinking that if they never make it back here again, they shouldn't leave their notes here for someone to find.

There isn't much ceremony when they finish. Peter's father hands her a gas mask and they both pocket several hypodermic needles full of the solution. The only thing he says to her as he leaves the lab is a brusque, "Follow me."

She does, without comment. She wonders how people will react to them on the street, Peter's father looking as grimy and unkempt as he does, but he's walking so fast that she doesn't have time to gage anyone's reactions. She doesn't ask where they're going or how long it will take for them to walk there, and he doesn't seem interested in telling her. She strains to keep at his heels, clutching her shoulder bag as it bangs against her hip, feeling the wind whip through her clothes and straight to her skin.

After twenty-five blocks of twisting and winding, Peter's father takes an abrupt turn onto a quiet street. There are barely any people out and the entryways to every building she can see look boarded up or somehow dodgy. She's glad that Peter's father is here, because now that she's really thinking about it, she didn't have a coherent plan beyond coming up with the antidote. How else did she plan on finding them, short of letting herself get kidnapped?

Peter's father stops short on the street. Gwen stares at him curiously, then follows his gaze to a plume of smoke emerging from a building not far from them. She looks back at him, at his thinned lips and tight, contained expression, and prepares herself to run toward the smoke.

He seems to be anticipating this. "Wait."

Someone is running toward them. Her heart seizes as she makes out the familiar shape of him, the familiar slap of his worn out shoes against the pavement and that wide-eyed, disbelieving look he always gets on his face when she turns up somewhere he doesn't expect her to be. She can't help the way her eyes water, the way her knees start to throb. She opens her mouth, his name on her lips, but then out of the corner of her eye she sees Peter's father stiffen.

"I know," she says, before he can tell her. It feels like her heart is breaking. She feels a pit of dread in her stomach, but she pastes a similarly sloppy smile on her face and tries to crush her disappointment. Her eyes flick to Peter's father; he has taken a step back, but his hand is in his pocket, where she knows he has kept the antidote.

She tears her eyes back at the running figure, extending her arms,

"Peter," she says, crashing into him, enveloping him in a hug. She clutches to him, hoping he mistakes the desperation in her voice for love, the quaking in her shoulders for relief. It's so foreign and horrible, the notion of what she is doing, that she has to squeeze her eyes shut. She is holding him and he feels so heart-wrenchingly similar to Peter, even _smells_ like him, that she almost feels a twinge of guilt when she opens her eyes and sees Peter's father looming behind him, ready to strike with one of the hypodermic needles.

In an instant, though, Gwen is reeling back, hitting the pavement with a thud. She can't see from the ground but she hears a snarl and assumes that the imposter Peter has rounded on Peter's father, and when she finally manages to prop herself up on her elbows she sees that they're already engaged in combat, in an equally matched fight that neither can find the upper hand.

She clambers to her feet. The needle has rolled to the sidewalk, only a few inches from her, and she yanks it up and poises it in her hands.

"No," Peter's father yells. Her eyes snap up to meet his for a brief second and then he dodges a blow from the imposter that ends up planting itself in a building. In the brief moment his opponent is distracted, Peter's father says loudly and clearly, "Leave it. Get Peter out of there."

She doesn't hesitate. She drops the needle and runs.

* * *

All things must end, and unfortunately, this story is ending soon. I think between finishing this, and the impending January finale of 30 Rock, I'm just going to be lost in a strange new world where there's nothing left to write, nothing left to watch, nothing left to do but ... find a _job_.

I'm moving to Nashville in a week! Is the good news. The bad news is, I'm totally unemployed, car-less, aaaaand apparently writing your own songs with the seven guitar chords that you know does not pay the billzz. Lately I've taken up this new hobby called "apply for everything and anything ever posted in the jobs section of Craigslist," but apparently in this market even job scammers don't feel like bothering with me. HARRUMPH.


	26. Chapter 26

**Reckless**

* * *

It isn't very far of a run. Half of a city block, a small flight of stairs down, a clear shot without anybody standing in her way. But for some reason the run to the smoking building seems to take centuries, as if gravity isn't just pushing her down but pulling her back. She pumps her knees and feels like she's hitting a wall of molasses, and she feels the burning in her lungs urging her _forward, faster_, even though she knows if she ran any faster she'd stumble and hit the ground.

It may not be far, but it's long enough—long enough for Gwen to imagine every possible horrifying scenario she'll encounter when she swings that door open. She imagines finding Peter and Johnson's burnt corpses, imagines that she's too late to find them at all, imagines that this could be a giant trap that she is willingly throwing herself into, _again_.

But it doesn't matter. All the sense and reason and fear. She flies down the stairs and lunges for the door as the plumes of smoke around it grow darker and larger and—

"_Shit_."

The doorknob is molten hot. She retracts her scalded hand instinctively, hissing in pain and surprise. She shoves her fist into her sleeve and tries for the door again, but it's stuck, the metal engorged with heat. She can't kick this kind of door open, it's too heavy—_"shit_, shit"—she has no choice but to shove her bare hands and it and shove it open as fast as she can.

She stumbles into the smoke and immediately sucks in an unintentional lungful of it. She splutters, but manages to keep her thoughts on the door, which she shoves enough to wedge open. Once she's sure it's stuck she turns her attention back to the dark, pluming room, which is barely illuminated by the light of day out on the street.

"Peter?"

It comes out as more of a wheeze than a yell, but knowing Peter he'll hear it anyway. She wonders if he's even in here, if he's alright, if Johnson is with him. She runs further into the smoke, every nerve in her body electrocuted, screaming at her to _go back_. Every step forward seems like a drastic betrayal of basic survival instincts, and the further she gets without seeing Peter, the more she worries that this is, in fact, no more than a trap, a lazy and heartbreaking way of letting her die instead of doing it out on the street where people can see.

Something made of glass smashes and she barely holds in a yelp. She follows the noise of it, rounding the corner, and for the first time she sees the giant, leaping flames mere feet away from her.

"Peter," she tries again.

Her only answer is the crackle of flame and the splitting of wood. She hazards a glance at the ceiling but there's nothing but blackness and more smoke. She keeps walking, wondering if she's even heading in a different path, wondering if she could even find her way back to the outside if she tried.

The hopelessness of the situation is crushing and immediate. She turns her back without any certainty of her direction, of how far she has spun around or where she is standing in relation to the door. She has failed, she is miserably in over her head—how can she save Peter if she can't even keep track of herself? She takes a few blind, staggering steps forward, her lungs burning, thinking that nobody will even know that she has died down here, nobody but Richard Parker, a man pretending to be a ghost.

She doesn't know where she's going, but she trudges further on. She will not die standing motionless, will not let this happen to her easily, not if there's even a shred of hope she can survive.

"Gwen!"

Her eyes snap up. She can't see him through the fog, but she recognizes the gravelly undertone, the firmness in Captain Johnson's voice. She takes a few tentative steps toward the sound until she can see the shape of his body, the contours of his face.

His eyes are wide and red-rimmed, his posture slack. She has never thought of Johnson as a man capable of surrender, but he looks like he has all but given up. It takes only a second to process the rest of the situation—his arms are pinned behind him, chained the same way she and Peter were at their first capture, and from the odd angle of Johnson's shoulder and pained set of his jaw, it's clear that he has been struggling for a long time.

Peter wouldn't leave Johnson here to die like this. Which means Peter either isn't here, or something is stopping him from leaving.

"Get out of here," says Johnson, croaking with the effort.

She shakes her head. "Where's Peter?"

"Get _out_ of here, Gwen, there's no key, there's nothing you can—_Gwen!_"

She sees his eyes flit to the right of him unconsciously in the middle of his sentence, and that's enough for her to dive in that direction on what little faith she has left. She hears Johnson continue to call her back as she navigates through the smog, but it only motivates her to delve further. If he is here, she he will find him. She couldn't ever leave him behind.

It takes her a few heart-stopping, slow seconds to see him, but once she does he is unmistakably, unquestionably _her_ Peter, and even though he is unconscious and perilously close to letting them all die here without his help, she feels a swell of relief so overwhelming that it takes a beat to suck herself back into the urgency of the moment.

"Peter," she tries. His head is lolled back against the wall, his jaw slack. She grabs his shoulders—she doesn't want to shake him, but she doesn't see any other options. "_Peter_, get _up_."

There is a thick stream of blood running down his forehead. She pushes back his hair and sees a nasty wound, but this shouldn't be enough to keep him down, she's seen him endure so much worse. Feeling badly about it, she all but shoves her mouth up to his ear and screams his name again, hoping to jar him back to reality.

"Leave, Gwen," she hears Captain Johnson bark. "I've tried, he's out—"

"_No_."

"There isn't even a _key,_ he can't help! _Leave _us!"

It occurs to Gwen that Johnson no longer believes Peter is Spiderman, then, if he can't see the advantage of waking Peter up. She presses on, yanking him forward, his body pitching like a limp rag doll. "Peter," she screams, "you _have to_—"

She feels the muscles in one of his arms seize and she jumps out of his way, watching as his eyes burst open and he sucks in a breath that leaves him gasping and spluttering in confusion. He looks around wildly, blinking like he has woken up in a carnival ride, and only manages to stop himself when his eyes hook onto hers.

His expression is wild and raw and pained. "What—what are you—"

"You have to get us out of here," says Gwen.

Peter moves his arms forward and releases a terse breath of air, only just realizing that he is chained. He shoves his whole body forward, and Gwen takes for granted his usual strength, thinking he will break the metal with ease, but he struggles and falls backward again, wheezing.

"Come on, Peter," she says, trying not to distract him with her own panic.

He tries again, and yells out in frustration when he rebounds and smacks his head against the wall. Gwen feels her throat tighten, feels another hot, unwelcome rush of terror seeping just under her skin. He keeps trying, his face red and crumpling with the effort, and finally he turns to her and says, "Get out of here, Gwen." His voice is desperate, barely choking out the words. "_Leave_."

"I won't go without you."

It's so hot it feels like her clothes are embers on her skin. Every inch of her is coated in sweat and grime and every instinct is demanding that she listen to him, that it is useless for her to die here with them, but she can't do it. She can't move. She can't walk out willingly into a world where Peter isn't there, too.

He shakes his head at her, the motion erratic. He struggles with more intent, veins popping in out of his neck and his forehead, some guttural, angry noise erupting from his throat. After a few more seconds without success he turns to her and screams, "Get _out_ of her, _please_—"

In milliseconds too quickly tied together to distinguish, Gwen hears a deafening smash of glass and feels herself get thrown against the hard ground with a thud. It takes a moment to process the weight of Peter's body on her, absorbing the blow, and she realizes he must have somehow freed himself in the chaos. Before she can collect herself she feels his hands hook under her arms and drag her to her feet.

"Johnson," she yells, pointing.

Peter nods, not letting go of her hand, making sure she follows him through the smoke. They reach Johnson, who is looking at them with a mixture of fury and relief.

"I _told_ you to—"

"Don't move," says Peter, bending down to Johnson's level.

Johnson shakes his head. "What do you think you're going to—"

Peter snaps the chain easily, the noise of it completely absorbed by the roar of the fire. Johnson stares at his freed hands and stares back at Peter. "You—you're—"

"Let's get _out_ of here," Gwen yells, snapping him out of the shock of his revelation.

Peter helps Johnson up to his feet and grabs Gwen's hand again. "Which way is out?" he asks Gwen, but she just shakes her head, coughing through the smoke.

Johnson takes a few deliberate steps forward. "He left this way," he says.

They follow him, blind and trusting. Gwen clutches to Peter's hand harder than she ever has before, and lets him jerk and swivel her when a leaping flame or a falling beam comes too close. Johnson leads and Peter watches, keeping them out of harm's way, and Gwen just walks, wondering if the soles of her boots have melted, if they're ever going to see the sun again or if this dark pit is going to swallow them up forever.

Peter squeezes her hand. She can't even see him through the smoke, can't even remember the last time she took a breath, but she feels the tension in his hand like a charge through her body and keeps moving.

She doesn't know how Johnson finds it, but eventually she sees the door, wedged open just the way she left it. They finally break out into a run, then, and fall out of the building in an ungraceful heap. Gwen feels Peter pulling her but as soon as they hit the staircase her knees collide with the cement and she lands on the palms of her hands, gasping and choking for air.

"Gwen." Peter reaches out for her and finds her shoulder. "Are you—"

"Yes," she gasps, stumbling to her feet. All her limbs feel heavy and drunk, like they don't belong to her anymore. Through the smoke-induced haze, through the still ringing terror in her ears, she manages to remember, "Your father—he's fighting the fake Spiderman, they're—out on the street."

Peter's eyes are bulging. "My father?"

She nods. "Go."

Peter disappears almost instantaneously. The smoke has billowed so far out of the building that she loses sight of him fast, and isn't expecting the hand on her arm, firmly leading her down the sidewalk.

"Do you have your phone?"

She nods up at Johnson, but he doesn't see her. His eyes are fixated down the street, where Gwen knows Peter and his father are two-teaming the imposter Spiderman. She hears a crash, the sound of a trashcan rolling into the street and a fist connecting with flesh, but she shoves her hand into her back pocket, marveling that her phone is still there and seems somewhat in tact, and thrusts it at Johnson.

He takes it from her and starts to dial. "I'm calling back up. You need to get off the street."

Gwen nods. She isn't stubborn enough to pretend that she is of any more use here. "Listen," she says. "The man who captured you, I don't know if you know, but he can change form. He can physically alter himself to be anyone he wants, and even use their abilities. He was the one who broke in to our lab at OsCorp, he's the one who has been posing as Spiderman."

He's listening, she can tell, but he also has a wary eye on the three person battle waging mere feet away and he clearly wants her to leave. "Gwen," he starts.

"Just a second. Here." She hands him one of the hypodermic needles she had stashed away; the other three exploded somewhere in the fire, and her bag is littered with broken glass and chemicals. "This is the antidote. Somebody needs to inject him with this, and Peter doesn't have any."

He takes it from her, holding the needles out on his open palm and looking at her with a bewildered expression.

"I know it sounds nuts. You have to trust me."

It's strange, how fast the dynamic between the two of them shifts. The respect in his eyes isn't begrudging, but it is a little surprised. "Alright," he says. She hears a grainy voice answer her cell phone and he holds it away from his eat for a moment and says, "Now go."

She glances over her shoulder to catch just a glimpse of them. She assumes that between the two of them, Peter and his father will effectively trap the man and inject the antidote, so even when she sees that they are all still struggling with each other, she doesn't feel any particular alarm. It's a battle she isn't fighting, but it is one she assumes that they'll win. And in that last glance, everybody is fine—Peter behind the imposter, slinging a web at his back, and Peter's father's hand is outstretched with one of the needles.

There are sirens in the distance. Gwen turns her head toward the noise and follows them, knowing that she can either meet one of the cop cars and step inside, or get shoved unceremoniously into one when they reach her. She has only walked a few feet away when she hears Peter cry out.

"_No!_"

She isn't thinking when she turns around, can't even imagine what has happened, but she knows Peter and she has never heard that kind of pain in his voice before. It sounds like a fatal blow, like a trapped animal, like someone who is staring death in the face with no means of escape. Her eyes snap onto him and it takes her too long to understand—he's fine. He's sticking to the side wall of a building and completely unharmed.

She looks down at the sidewalk.

"Oh." The sound escapes her, low and unintentional. Peter's father is sprawled on the ground, his eyes wide open and staring at the sky, his neck bent at an angle so unnatural that even from this distance, Gwen knows without a single doubt in her mind that he is dead.

Before she can process the magnitude of what has happened, she hears another scream—primal and full of malice. She sees Peter lunge forward, a dark blur of hoodie and jeans, and strike the imposter Spiderman with enough force that Gwen can hear his skull hit against the pavement. The man's skin loses shape for a moment and Gwen watches, repulsed, as his bones crunch with the effort to reform: he now looks exactly like Peter's father.

Peter stops short, his fist in the air, his mouth open and his eyes streaming. Gwen is frozen to the spot, terrified that he will lose all the fight in him if he is forced to take him on in this form.

Instead Peter's lip twists into a snarl. "How _dare_ you," he says. Peter's fist is quivering but he strikes with so much force that blood immediately spurts from the other man's mouth. The man strikes back with just as much power but Peter hardly flinches, like his body is made of steel, incapable of absorbing blows.

Gwen is only half-watching, her eyes still stuck on the body on the sidewalk in disbelief. It happened so fast. She had hardly turned her back and it _happened so fast_. The shock feels like a chasm in her chest, like trying to take a breath underwater.

"He's going to kill him."

Captain Johnson's words break through her paralysis, the sound of his voice dissonant against the rest of the tumult around them. She thinks he means that the imposter is going to kill Peter and her body seizes with fear, but one glance back at the fight and she sees that it's the opposite: Peter is wrathful, Peter is crazed and unfamiliar and out of control—Peter is aiming to kill.

She looks back at Johnson but he's still staring at her, as if he expects her to do something. She can't even shake her head. Her voice is stuck in her throat, she is frozen with a grief that doesn't even belong to her. She remembers losing her own father, remembers her anger the way it was when it was fresh and overwhelming, the way the pulsing rage demanded the energy of every thought and muscle fiber in her body. Even if she speaks, he won't hear her. Even if she stands in his way, he won't see her there.

"Peter! Peter, stop!"

It's Johnson who chases after them, not Gwen. She watches, still petrified. She's remembering the guilty, emotionally spent man who told her two years ago that leaving Peter was his biggest regret; she's remembering the man stayed up with her all night to save Peter's life as a deadly serum coursed through his veins; worst of all, she's remembering one of the first times she ever saw Peter, when they were thirteen on a field trip to OsCorp and his eyes lit up like stars when he told one of his friends that his parents were _scientists_, and he was going to be _just like them. _

Predictably, Johnson's warnings fall on deaf ears. In a series of movements too quickly executed for Gwen to follow she watches as Peter slams the imposter against the wall and pins him there in a chokehold. The man starts to gag, legs dangling, suspended off the ground.

Johnson hasn't quite reached them yet, but something makes him falter mid-run. Gwen looks up and cringes as she watches the imposter's body fold back into itself, creasing and grinding and oozing. It starts to shrink, starts to sprout hair, starts to pale and thin out.

"Jesus," Johnson exclaims.

Once it completes its transformation Gwen feels the heat of stupidity rushing into her cheeks—it took her longer than any of them to recognize herself.

Peter's grip loosens. He takes several horrified, gasping breaths, his body quaking violently, like he is trying to fight himself. Johnson lurches forward with the antidote Gwen gave him but he won't be fast enough if Peter lets the imposter go.

"I'm right here, Peter," Gwen reminds him, watching as the fake version of her writhes and purples in the face.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut, cranes his neck away. He won't look at her, he won't look at either of them, his face twisted in anguish as he continues to pin the imposter down. Johnson is mere inches away from sinking the needle in when the imposter flails his—her?—foot out unexpectedly, knocking it to the ground and shattering it.

Peter doesn't see the needle fall but he hears it. "I can't," he says through his teeth. A mix of sweat and tears have formed a wet layer on his face. "I _can't_."

The only person who has any of the antidote left is Peter's father.

"I'm right here," she says again, willing her voice not to falter. She runs to Peter's father and tries to rummage through his coat pocket without looking at him, but she still sees the blank, wide eyes and she thinks the sight of his corpse might haunt her forever. It takes too long to find it—it is only seconds, but it's too long, too long for her to be kneeling beside a dead body, too long for Peter to be holding a version of her in a chokehold.

"Oh, god," Peter is moaning under his breath. "Oh, god, oh, god."

"Don't let go. It's not me," Gwen manages, and then her hand wraps around it, another one of the needles. She struggles to her feet and runs forward, past Johnson, past Peter, until she's face to face with the imposter.

It's an indescribably bizarre feeling, looking into her own eyes. The Gwen that stares back at her is red in the face, croaking for oxygen, pleading for mercy in its measured stare. She has never seen herself this way, has never observed herself in her weakest moments, but suddenly she is stricken by the familiarity of her own desperation. This Gwen is frail. This Gwen is _pathetic_. This Gwen is lonely and shattered and broken and reminds her far too much of everything she is afraid she might become.

The needle sinks in with much more force than she intended, but she manages to hold it down as the antidote seeps in under the pale flesh. The imposter screams and Gwen reels back as Peter releases it; by the time it hits the ground, all that's left is an unrecognizable, shapeless mass of flesh slapping against the concrete. For a few seconds it thrashes on the ground and then, painstakingly, she hears the crunch of limbs distorting and rearranging themselves, until all that's left is an ordinary looking man unconscious on the sidewalk at their feet.

For a moment none of them says a word. Gwen takes a few steps back from the unconscious man, and almost tripping in her haste to get away from him. Without turning back to look at his father, Peter sinks to his knees, his chest heaving, his head in his hands, moaning words that Gwen doesn't understand.

Johnson is the first to regain his composure. He takes quick strides over to Gwen and grabs her shoulders.

"You need to get out of here."

She becomes painfully aware of the sirens blaring in her ears, rounding the corner toward them. "What will you tell them?" she asks. Her tongue feels like sandpaper. His eyes flit away from her, toward Peter, and she says firmly, "I'm not going without him."

Johnson nods. "Both of you. I'll take care of it."

Gwen wants to believe him. She wants to grab Peter's arm and drag him away, wants to hole up in her apartment with him and sleep for hours and hours and wake up in a world where they don't have to look in their friends' faces and wonder if they're somebody else, in a world where they don't have to check every alley and street corner for someone lurking to attack.

But she can't. Not until she takes care of this, once and for all.

"You can't go after him anymore," she says, grabbing Johnson's sleeve, refusing to let go. "You have to promise me."

Johnson pulls his arm away gently and looks her in the eye. "I'll take care of it."

They both whip around as the first police car screeches into sight. They've run out of time. Gwen stands there for an indecisive beat, but Johnson has already turned away, expecting that she has started running. She wonders how they'll ever get out of here with Peter so distraught but when she finds him he's on his feet, waiting for her, holding out his arm to her in that familiar way he does whenever he's about to catapult the two of them several stories into the air.

She hesitates. She doesn't have to look to know that his father's body is still lying on the sidewalk, yards away.

"Come on," he says, his features rigid and inexpressive.

"Peter …" She thought she would have to be the one to convince him to leave, but now she feels rooted, bound to the horrible things that have happened here.

His reach is unexpectedly steady. He waits for her, arm still outstretched. "I've got you," he says.

She takes a step closer to him and lets him secure his arm around her waist. She shuts her eyes as she hears the whir of the biocable release, feels the sharp tug of gravity against her chest and the wind blow through her hair. Everything is a blur of traffic and windows and skyline, breathtakingly beautiful as a blood-orange sun sinks into the sky, but all she can see are the cold, unseeing eyes of Peter's father. All she can hear are the last words he said to her before she took off: _Get Peter out of there._

She glances up at him, at the hardness of his face and the distance in his eyes, and wonders if she ever can.

* * *

Aaaaand scene.

I've got one more chapter left of this puppy and I am determined to chug it out before I make my big city move. Now that I've gotten this far I can go ahead and say I literally thought never in a million years with my course load and the musical and graduation that I would EVER get this story finished, which just goes to show how my already poor social skills have deteriorated in the last five months of writing this in my spare time instead of talking to other humans. (Pfft, friendship. I've got FICTIONAL FRIENDS).

Has anyone else ever experienced that terrible ominous gut-wrenching phenomenon that happens when you think you just saw a large many-legged creature crawl under your dresser? Because that's happening to me right now. IIIII'm gonna go ahead and go ...


	27. Chapter 27

**Reckless**

* * *

Nearly a month passes before Peter acknowledges his father's death with any formality. They've barely spoken of it because the weight of it seems to dominate every pause, every bit of silence between them. Gwen hasn't wanted to pressure him to talk about it, but she's starting to worry that he never will when he unexpectedly tells her on a cold day in January that he wants to visit his father's grave.

It's the kind of cold that bites and nips at every sliver of exposed skin. Gwen trudges beside him quietly, burrowing her fists into her pockets, nudging her chin deeper into her scarf. Peter is quiet but not sullen. They walk a ways into the empty graveyard, their shadows short against the morning sun.

Suddenly he stops.

"So this is it."

Gwen reads the headstone. It's a little one, unobtrusive and flat on the ground, that simply reads _Parker_—no first name, no dates. It's actually Captain Johnson who took care of all the arrangements. She hasn't seen the grave until now, either.

She hazards a glance at Peter, not sure what to expect. But his eyes are steady, his expression thoughtful; it's actually the most composed she has seen him in weeks, or what little she has seen of him. She is all but living in his apartment now, having wordlessly moved her things across the hall a few at a time, but he is hardly ever there. He comes back at random intervals, sometimes bloody and bruised, sometimes perfectly unharmed, but always withdrawn and anxious and quiet.

Peter stands there for a few minutes, still and reverent as a statue. Gwen flounders, trying to understand her role in this. She wonders if she should stay as still as he is, or if she should try to comfort him in some way, or if she should leave altogether and give him some time alone. She gnaws on her lower lip, waiting for some sort of cue.

It feels like she has been living like this ever since it happened. She wonders what Peter wants from her, but he seems to want nothing at all, and she feels badly about it. It's not that he objects to her—they have conversations, they sleep next to each other on his little twin bed, they eat and walk around the city read their textbooks side by side. But sometimes she can see a tightness in his face, a particular set of his jaw. And then, unexpectedly, he won't look at her at all. He won't pick up the phone when his aunt calls. He'll just find something to fixate on, like his computer or the police radio frequency, and drown himself in it, inaccessible to the rest of the world.

The episodes only last a few hours, but those are the few hours Gwen feels the most useless. It doesn't feel right to try to make him talk to her before he's ready to talk, so all she can do is sit there in the excruciating silence and wait for him to come back.

Peter starts walking away from the gravestone so unceremoniously that Gwen stands there, bewildered in his wake. She thinks maybe he's just pacing, that he'll come right back, but his strides are purposeful and headed toward the entrance.

"Wait," says Gwen, without thinking.

Peter stops and she feels her cheeks heat up. She shouldn't be orchestrating this, but somehow it doesn't feel right. Like he's leaving this unfinished, brushing it under the rug again so he can spend another month buried in his grief.

He's looking at her, waiting for her to either explain her outburst or follow him. His eyes are so tired. She knows he doesn't sleep much anymore.

"What?" he finally asks.

Gwen swallows hard. "I just—I don't know. Thought you might want to say something."

Peter doesn't miss a beat. "Why? He's dead."

He says it so bluntly that Gwen can't help but cringe. She takes a few steps forward, her boots crunching against the hardened frost, but then she stops again. She bites the inside of her cheek, deciding she shouldn't say it, but saying it anyway: "Why did you even want to come here?"

If she's looking for some admission, some crack in the armor, she is disappointed. "I don't know," he says stubbornly. He shifts his weight onto his other foot impatiently. "Let's go."

"Peter—"

"What?" he snaps. When he shakes his head she sees the irritation creased into the lines of his face, but she already knows he's mad at himself, not at her. "I'm sorry," he mumbles, "I just—I'm done here."

"I'm not," says Gwen.

His voice is surprisingly even. "Fine," he says. "I'll meet you at the front gate."

She closes her eyes and listens to the sound of him trudging away. Now that he's gone she feels stupid for saying anything in the first place. She had hoped he might be ready to acknowledge this, that by coming here today he might make some progress with his grief, but she knows that it's the kind of thing that can't be scheduled or planned.

Now she stands here, awkward and unsure, staring down at the grave of a man she hardly ever knew. She exhales and watches the fog of her breath in the air, thinking of how much she owes to Johnson—he made all the arrangements for Peter's father himself. It only occurred to Gwen after they left that Richard Parker was supposed to have been a dead man for years, and that his reappearance, even in death, would cause a media storm that would put pressure and scrutiny on Peter and his aunt that they could never handle. She has no idea how Johnson managed to effectively sweep a dead John Doe under the rug, or how he made the arrangements to have him buried here, but she figures he owes Peter at least that much after aiming bullets at him for years.

They've called off the attacks on Spiderman. There is still a warrant out for his arrest, but Johnson says he can't do anything about that too quickly without raising suspicion. Gwen knows this because she's been going to dinner at home now, and most nights Johnson is there, too. He and her mother really seem to be in love. Gwen hasn't had a lot of time or energy to spare wondering about it.

She turns now, back toward the entrance, but Peter is already out of sight. She figures she has to stay out here for another minute or two now that she has committed herself. She takes a few hesitant steps toward the headstone and kneels beside it.

Somewhere there is another grave, she knows. A properly marked one with the names of both of Peter's parents, in Connecticut, where his mother was born. This is the grave Peter visited two times in the last fifteen years, the grave where he assumed his parents were laid to rest after a plane crash, a plane crash Gwen is starting to doubt ever happened.

That's something Peter hasn't addressed yet: the still unanswered questions, the secrets his father must have planned to tell him in good time. She has a feeling in her gut that there are things looming on the horizon: the unanswered questions involving his mother's death, Connors and his supposed involvement with the Parkers' disappearance, and all of the unforeseeable obstacles Peter will now have to face alone.

Gwen brushes the cold granite with her fingers. She doesn't have anything to say to Richard Parker. She could thank him for Peter, for making him the man he is today, but it seems to her that his involvement in Peter's life was strictly biological: he is the man whose DNA Peter inherited, the man who injected him with a formula that altered him forever, but he is not the man who raised him.

Still, he was a man with the best of intentions. That much she understood. And now Peter is stuck living with those intentions, for better or for worse.

She stands without saying anything and walks slowly back to the entrance, hugging her arms to her chest against the cold. She doesn't see Peter. She figures he must have walked to the car.

She takes a long last look around the graveyard. The day is bleak but their surroundings are beautiful. The graveyard is nestled between rolling hills, framed by thick evergreen trees, and overlooks a sweet little town. It's a long haul from Manhattan and she has forgotten what it's like to enjoy nature without hearing a car horn honk in the distance. Out here she feels different—calmer, maybe. It's been a long time since she's felt this kind of calm. Even after their confrontation with the imposter Spiderman it seemed for days as though she was still living in it: the man's face was plastered over every newspaper and the footage of the aftermath ran on a loop on every television station, and as if that wasn't bad enough, OsCorp was surrounded by a mass of journalists shoving microphones in her face every time she tries to walk through the main doors.

"The Chameleon," the media refers to him. Days after his apprehension they learned his true identity: a Russian immigrant Dmitri Smerdyakov, infamous for his use of smoke and mirrors to impersonate people, a habit that apparently got him in plenty of trouble in his home country. It seems like every hour another story was released involving warrants out for his arrest over the past few decades—the public interest is only just starting to die down, but it doesn't make it any easier to cross a street and see his domineering, thickly featured face staring back at them from a television screen.

"Peter?"

He isn't standing in the entryway, and she can see the parking lot from here so he isn't by the car, either. She leans against the stone gates and sheds one of her gloves to pull out her phone and call him. It rings once and then she hears the echo of a ring, the sound of Peter's phone going off, within hearing range. She turns to the other side of the gate, following the noise of it.

Peter is sitting against the wall, grappling for the phone and swiping at his cheeks and trying to recover just a beat too late. His eyes snap up to meet hers, red-rimmed and streaming. He averts his face sharply, out of view, staring out at the graveyard.

"Hey," she says. He doesn't want her to see this, he doesn't want her to come any closer, but this time is different. This time she will.

He hears her approaching and his entire body seems to tense. A noise escapes his throat, like he's going to try to say something, but after a couple indistinct croaks and one long, throaty gasp, he buries his head in his knees.

She sits beside him. His shoulders are shaking and he is suddenly ominously quiet, holding his breath as if he can swallow down his misery. She waits for him, pressing her shoulder against his shoulder, leaning her head into the crook of his neck. Finally he exhales in a sharp, chest-seizing breath, gasping and sniveling, breaking like a dam. His limbs seem to sag and he sinks into her readily and gratefully and Gwen snakes her arm around his shoulders and lets him cry.

The words come out strangled and almost incoherent: "If I had—if I had _just_ …"

It's an idea that seems to define them. There are so many thoughtless instances, so many inconsequential run-ins and words and poorly-timed moments that have led them here. Gwen has spent entire nights awake imagining ways she could have saved her own father, but at least she wasn't there when it happened. She can live with the knowledge that there is little she could have done. Peter will be reliving those last moments for the rest of his life.

She knows better than to tell him that it isn't his fault, that he can't beat himself up this way. He is telling her because she is the only one who can understand. He is telling her because he needs someone to hear it.

"I turned away for a second." His voice is wet with mucus and anguish. He turns his head back toward her but isn't really looking at her, isn't really looking at anything, with his eyes scrunched and his nose twisted and skin of his cheeks blotched on his face. "Just a—a _second_, and when I turned around …"

"I know," she murmurs.

She rubs his back, feeling the beat of his heart through his jacket. She doesn't know how long they sit there for. The sun starts rising higher into the sky and the frost around them starts to melt and they sink into the muddy earth together.

She thinks about how far they've come. She thinks about the first time she saw Peter, all scrawny and wiry with a camera awkwardly dangling from his neck, and she thinks about the first time she really _saw_ him, that day out in the courtyard when Flash beat him to a pulp. It's strange to her that those seem like the unbelievable moments now, the ordinary, arbitrary moments, because in her mind the ordinary has become unusual: she is so used to all the insanity that has happened since that it seems strange to think that there was ever a time when the two of them were just normal high school kids whose biggest concerns were getting good marks for college and making it to class before the first bell.

Now when she looks back it feels like the years have gone by extraordinarily fast. She feels old, she feels like she knows too much. It's terrifying how quickly these situations seem to devolve in the scientific world, and it's terrifying how little the rest of the world really knows about what's happening between OsCorp's walls. She thinks of MJ, thinks of the rest of her classmates, unfettered and unburdened, completely unaware of the danger on the horizon.

Would she trade even a second of this to remain ignorant? She looks at Peter, another victim in OsCorp's crossfire, essentially raised as an experiment. She wonders what he would give to go back and change this, or if he would at all.

She wonders where they would be now, if they were the same normal kids they were in that high school courtyard all those years ago. She likes to think that they would have found each other without all the chaos involved in the beginning of their relationship, that they would still be this intensely in love and that somewhere, in another universe, she and Peter could have been happy and plain and safe.

The quiet is disrupted when Peter jerks his head up to look at her. He sucks in a breath, sharp and painful, and the words burst out of him: "Everyone around me—is everyone just going to _die?_"

She tries not to react. She has been afraid of this since his father died—that he would start thinking the way he did before, thinking that he couldn't let anyone too close to him because of the danger. But she has come too far and waited too long for him to change his mind about the promise and let her down again.

"Yes," she says. He looks up at her, stricken, and she says more firmly, "We're all going to die, Peter."

If she had slapped him clean across the face she thinks she thinks he might look less horrified than he does now. He stares at her for a beat, his face still slick with tears but his expression far from it, growing indignant. "You know that's not—you know what I mean," he says, "I mean _die_, Gwen, like your dad, like my parents, like Connors and Uncle _Ben_—"

"No," says Gwen, "_No_. Don't do this again, I won't let you do this again. You can't just get rid of me—you said it yourself," she insists, because he's opening his mouth to protest, "that living apart from each other, it's like living like we're _already dead_." She looks at him, unyielding, her words final and certain: "And if, god forbid, anything ever happened to one of us, I don't want it to be when we're alone and gray and old and wondering what might have been. I want to be with _you_. I want us to be _together_."

Peter doesn't move, his eyes set steadily on the ground in front of them. "Gwen," he says. "I can't ever … if you're with me, you'll never be able to …" He looks at her a little helplessly, not sure how to say it even though they both know what he means. He gestures vaguely and says, "It would never be the way you pictured it. Your life. You know."

Gwen can't lie to herself. She doesn't see this ending well. And that's a truth that she has to face now, face it and then never look back. She can't really picture a future where things settle down, where Peter lives long enough for them to get married or have children or let Spiderman retire for good, but Gwen has always had a hard time picturing herself having a normal, predictable life. Her father always knew that about her, right from the beginning, and she's starting to think her mother is coming to terms with it, too.

She squeezes his shoulder with her hand and leans in closer, as if the pressure of their bodies together can leave an impression on her skin, can keep him with her forever.

"I don't care," she says simply. "I would always, always—_always _rather be with you."

Peter doesn't say anything. She knows that it isn't a nice thing for him to hear. She knows it would be easier on him if she could just give this whole idea up, if she could will herself not to love him, and then he would be forced to move on and never feel the guilt of involving her in this. It's the kind of love that can never be unselfish or uncomplicated but it's the only kind of love she knows.

He leans toward her just slightly and cups a hand to her cheek. She meets his gaze and they stare into each other, and she feels that same happy lurch in her stomach, one that she hasn't felt in a long time—a reminder of simpler days, before the guilt and the broken promises and the weight of an entire city on their shoulders. His eyes slide closed and he guides her head forward with his hand, pressing his lips to her forehead and holding her there, in a moment so intimate and loving and sad that Gwen feels it crushing in her lungs.

It isn't permission, it isn't acceptance—he is never going to feel right letting her stay with him. But it's the closest she's going to get.

He pulls away from her and she swallows back her tears, embarrassed by how emotional she is all of a sudden. It strikes Gwen how truly alone they are now. Yes, she has her mother, and he has his aunt, but the people they have relied on, the people who have fundamental understanding of the complications and burdens in their lives, are gone. Sometimes when they're lying on his mattress at night she listens to the sounds of the city around them and everything seems so overwhelming, like the universe might swallow them whole.

"It's getting late," she says, but neither of them move. She rests her head on his shoulder and listening to the sound of their breathing as it punctuates the quiet, and closes her eyes.

Eventually they will get up, walk back to the car and start the long drive to Manhattan. Eventually they will laugh again, and hold hands on the street, and talk about things that matter instead of everything in between. And it's the promise of eventually that gets Gwen through this, through right _now_, when everything feels like it has fallen apart.

Peter slouches and says to nobody in particular, "What are we going to do?"

It's a question that isn't looking for an answer. She shifts her body away from him and offers her hand and says, "Come on, Peter." She gives him a watery smile, and he gives her a crooked expression in return. Her Peter is still there. She will be patient, she will wait for him for however long it takes. She sucks a breath of cold air into her chest and says, "Let's go home."

* * *

I just want to thank all of you so much for reading this and sticking with me and leaving your encouraging and helpful and sometimes downright hilarious reviews. It's been a crazy past few months but I always feel better when I hear from you guys. I'm happy that I finished this, but yikes, life's not gonna be the same!

I also want to thank those of you who went out of your way to find my music stuff on Facebook, I really appreciate your support and it totally makes my day. If on the off chance I ever get real person famous, I trust all of you to pretend that this very large and nerdy work of fanfiction never happened, the same way Peter trusts Gwen with his secret hero identity.

So long for now, fellow fanfickers. See you approximately forty minutes after the midnight premiere of the sequel in 2014.


End file.
